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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No. 

She!f__„Jri3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS OF BURNS 
WITH CARLYLE'S ESSAY 




ROBERT BURNS 



(After a painting by NASMYTH) 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS 



OF 



ROBERT BURNS 



WITH 



CARLYLE'S ESSAY ON BURNS 



Edited 
With Introductions, Notes, and Vocabulary 



by 



CHARLES LANE HANSON 

Instructor in English in the Mechanic Arts 
High School, Boston 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 

GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

Cbe &t&ewettm press 

1899 



\ 



47560 



Copyright, 1899, by 
CHARLES LANE HANSON 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 




SECOND 



COPY, 









TO 

MY BURNS SECTION 

OF THE CLASS OF 1898 
WORCESTER ENGLISH HIGH SCHOOL 

APPRECIATIVE, SYMPATHETIC 
EAGER TO LEARN 



The memory of Burns, — every man's, every boy's 
and girl's head carries snatches of his songs, and they 
say them by heart, and, what is strangest of all, never 
learned them from a book, but from mouth to mouth. 
The wind whispers them, the birds whistle them, the 
corn, barley, and bulrushes hoarsely rustle them, nay, 
the music boxes at Geneva are framed and toothed 
to play them ; the hand organs of the Savoyards in 
all cities repeat them, and the chimes of bells ring 
them in the spires. They are the property and the 
solace of mankind. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



CONTENTS. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 

PAGE 

The Mission of the Book xi 

Representative Poems of Burns 1 

1 78 1. Song, — Mary Morison 2 

A Prayer in the Prospect of Death . . 3 

1782. The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie . 5 
Poor Mailie's Elegy 7 

1783. Song, — Green Grow the Rashes .... 9 

1784. Man was Made to Mourn 10 

1785. Song, — Rantin Rovin Robin 14 

To a Mouse x 5 

The Cotter's Saturday Night . . . .18 

1786. The Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning Salu- 

tation to his Auld Mare, Maggie . . 25 

The Twa Dogs 3° 

Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly 

Righteous 4° 

To A Louse 43 

To a Mountain Daisy 45 

A Bard's Epitaph 47 

Lines on an Interview with Lord Daer . 49 

A Winter Night 5 1 

1787. The Banks of the Devon 54 

M'Pherson's Farewell . . .. • • - 55 

1788. Of a' the Airts the Wind can Blaw . . 57 
Auld Lang Syne 5^ 

ix 



xii THE MISSION OF THE BOOK. 

his introduction of biographical material is so effective in 
interpreting the life and the work of Burns, that if we read 
it and reread it, if we absorb it, we shall soon come to 
know the peasant poet. The man, his life, and his work are 
peculiarly inseparable. Failure to recognize this has been 
responsible for numberless misconceptions and useless dis- 
cussions of Burns. Carlyle's recognition of it and his skill 
in treating the three subjects as one have enabled him to 
make many a valuable criticism. 

In the case of nearly every poem the text is that of the 
Atheficeum Press, prepared by the late Professor J. G. Dow, 
under the general editorship of Professors G. L. Kittredge 
and C. T. Winchester. I have drawn freely from this 
scholarly edition, as well as from the more pretentious 
editions of William Wallace and Scott Douglas. 



POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 



A lower and a lusty bacheler, 

With lokkes crulle as they were leyd in presse. 

Of twenty yeer of age he was, I gesse. 

Of his stature he was of evene length e, 

And wonderly delivere and greet of strengthe ; 5 

Singinge he was or floytinge, al the day ; 
He was as fresh as is the month of May. 

He coulde songes make and wel endite, 

Juste and eek daunce and wel purtreye and write. 

So hote he lovede that by nightertale J o 

He sleep namore than doth a nightingale. 

These lines from Chaucer's description of his squire 
will serve to introduce Robert Burns at the age of twenty- 
one. On the naturally robust frame of the vigorous lad 
severe toil had already left stooping shoulders, yet he 15 
was attractive and full of life. The fascination of his 
large glowing eyes, his unusual powers of conversation, 
and his passion for leadership combined to make him 



2 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

conspicuous in the community. One who knew him well 
could see that he was bent on becoming prominent out- 
side of his native town. But at the outset we notice him 
merely as an impetuous young man who was continually 
5 falling in love and writing verses about experiences of 
which we know little. In his twenty-third year he wrote 
the following 

SONG, — MARY MORISON. 

Mary, at thy window be, 

It is the wish'd, the trysted x hour ! 
10 Those smiles and glances let me see, 

That make the miser's treasure poor : 
How blythely wad I bide the stoure,' 2 

A weary slave frae sun to sun, 
Could I the rich reward secure, 
15 The lovely Mary Morison. 

Yestreen when to the trembling string 3 
The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha', 

To thee my fancy took its wing, 
I sat, but neither heard nor saw : 
20 Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, 4 

And yon the toast of a' the town, 

1 sigh'd, and said amang them a', 

" Ye are na Mary Morison." 

O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, 
25 Wha for thy sake wad gladly die ? 

Or canst thou break that heart of his, 
Whase only faut is loving thee ? 

1 agreed upon. 2 struggle. 3 of a village fiddler in the corner of 

a barn or a schoolroom. 4 finely dressed. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 3 

If love for love thou wilt na gie, 

At least be pity to me shown : 
A thought ungentle canna be 

The thought o' Mary Morison. 

This tender, quiet, beautiful lyric is the work of a singer 5 
who has mastered his technic. Some lovers of Burns will 
surely agree with Hazlitt, who says : " Of all the pro- 
ductions of Burns, the pathetic and serious love-songs 
which he has left behind him in the manner of old bal- 
lads are perhaps those which take the deepest and most 10 
lasting hold of the mind. Such are the lines to ' Mary 
Morison ' . . . and the song ' O my Love is like a Red, 
Red Rose.' " 

Buoyant as Burns was much of the time, there were 
many occasions on which "fainting fits" or other symp- 15 
toms more or less alarming prompted verses of such a 
thoroughly serious nature as 

A PRAYER 

IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH. 

Oh thou unknown Almighty Cause 

Of all my hope and fear ! 
In whose dread presence, ere an hour, 20 

Perhaps I must appear ! 

If I have wander'd in those paths 

Of life I ought to shun — 
As something, loudly, in my breast, 

Remonstrates I have done — 25 



Thou know'st that Thou hast formed me 
With passions wild and strong ; 



POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 



And listening to their witching voice 
Has often led me wrong. 



Where human weakness has come short 



Or frailty stept aside, 
o Thou, All-good ! — f 
In shades of darkness hide. 



Do Thou, All-good ! — for such Thou art 



Where with intention I have err'd, 

No other plea I have 
But — Thou art good; and Goodness still 
io Delighteth to forgive. 

This plea is not unlike Whittier's thought in The Eter- 
nal Goodness : 

Yet in the maddening maze of things, 
And tossed by storm and flood," 
15 To one fixed trust my spirit clings ; 

I know that God is good ! 

Of a production not so remorseful nor so poetic, " A 
Prayer, Under the Pressure of Violent Anguish," John 
Stuart Blackie says : " The man who could feel and write 

20 thus was not far from the best piety of the psalms of 
David." 

In these early days we notice Burns's ability to get the 
point of view of dumb animals. One day Hugh Wilson, 
a neighbor herd boy, came anxiously running up to tell 

25 Burns that the ewe had entangled herself in the tether. 
Burns was much amused at the alarm of the "odd, glow- 
ran, gapin' callan, about three-fourths as wise as other 
folk"; he set poor Mailie free, and when they returned 
from the plow in the evening he repeated to his brother 

30 Gilbert, much as it now stands, 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 

THE DEATH AND DYING WORDS OF POOR 

MAILIE, 

THE AUTHOR'S ONLY PET YOWE : 
An unco mournful Tale. 

As Mailie an' her lambs thegither 
Was ae day nibblin on the tether, 
Upon her cloot l she coost 2 a hitch, 3 
An' owre 4 she warsl'd 5 in the ditch : 
There, groanin, dyin, she did lie, 
When Hughoc he cam doytin 6 by. 

Wi' glowrin een and lifted Iran's, 
Poor Hughoc like a statue Stan's ; 
He saw her days were near-hand ended, 
But wae 's my heart ! he could na mend it. 
He gaped wide but naething spak — 
At length poor Mailie silence brak. 

" O thou, whase lamentable face 
Appears to mourn my woefu' case ! 
My dying words attentive hear, x 5 

An' bear them to my Master dear. 

" Tell him, if e'er again he keep 
As muckle gear 7 as buy a sheep — 
Oh, bid him never tie them mair 
Wi' wicked strings o' hemp or hair ! 
But ca' 8 them out to park or hill, 
An' let them wander at their will : 
So may his flock increase and grow 
To scores o' lambs and packs o' woo' ! 

ihoof. 2 cast. 3 bop. 4 over. 5 struggled. 6 walking stupidly. 
1 much wealth. 8 drive. 



io 



20 



6 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

" Tell him, he was a Master kin', 
An' aye was guid 1 to me an' mine ; 
An' now my dying charge I gie him — 
My helpless lambs, I trust them wi' him. 

5 " Oh, bid him save their harmless lives 

Frae dogs, an' tods, 2 an' butchers' knives ! 
But gie them guid cow-milk their fill, 
Till they be fit to fend 3 themsel ; 
An' tent 4 them duly, e'en an' morn, 
10 Wi' taets 5 o' hay, an' ripps 6 o' corn. 

" An' may they never learn the gaets 7 
Of ither vile, wanrestfu' 8 pets, 
To slink through slaps, 9 an' reave 10 an' steal 
At stacks o' peas, or stocks o' kail. 11 
15 So may they, like their great forbears, 

For monie a year come thro' the shears : 

So wives will gie them bits o' bread, 

An' bairns greet 12 for them when they 're dead. 

" My poor toop-lamb, 13 my son an' heir, 
20 Oh, bid him breed him up wi' care ; 

An' if he live to be a beast, 
To pit some havins 14 in his breast ! 

" An' warn him, what I winna u name, 
To stay content wi' yowes 1G at hame ; 
25 An' no to rin 17 an' wear his cloots, 

Like ither menseless, 18 graceless brutes. 

1 good. 2 foxes. 3 provide for. 4 take care of. 5 small quantities. 
6 handfuls. "> ways. 8 restless. 9 gaps in a fence. 10 rob. 

11 cabbage. 12 weep. 13 ram. 14 sense of propriety. 15 will not. 
!6 ewes. 17 run. 18 indiscreet. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 7 

" And niest l my yowie,- silly thing, 
Gude 3 keep thee frae a tether string ! 
Oh, may thou ne'er forgather 4 up 
Wi' ony blastit, moorland toop, 

But ay keep mind to moop 5 and mell 6 5 

Wi' sheep o' credit like thysel ! 

" And now, my bairns, wi' my last breath 
I lea'e my blessin wi' you baith ; 
And when you think upo' your mither, 
Mind to be kin' to ane anither. 10 

" Now, honest Hughoc, dinna fail 
To tell my master a' my tale ; 
An' bid him burn this cursed tether, 
An' for thy pains thou 'se get my blether." 7 

This said, poor Mailie turn'd her head, 15 

An' closed her een amang the dead ! 

Written later, apparently, was 

POOR MAILIE'S ELEGY. 

Lament in rhyme, lament in prose, 

Wi' saut tears tricklin doun your nose ; 

Our Bardie's fate is at a close, 20 

Past a' remead ; 8 
The last, sad cape-stane 9 o' his woe 's — 

Poor Mailie 's dead ! 

It 's no the loss o' warl's gear, 10 

That could sae bitter draw the tear, 25 

1 next. 2 little ewe. 3 God. 4 meet. 5 nibble. 6 associate. 

7 bladder. 8 remedy. 9 copestone. 10 world's goods. 



S POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Or mak our Bardie, dowie, 1 wear 

The mourn in weed : 
He 's lost a friend and neebor dear, 

In Mailie dead. 

5 Thro' a' the toun she trotted by him ; 

A lang half-mile she could descry him ; 
Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him, 

She ran wi' speed : 
A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh him, 
io Than Mailie dead. 

•> I wat 2 she was a sheep o' sense, 

An' could behave hersel wi' mense ; 3 
I '11 say 't, she never brak a fence, 
Thro' thievish greed. 
15 Our Bardie, lanely, keeps the spence 4 

Sin Mailie 's dead. 

Or, if he wanders up the howe, 5 
Her livin image in her yowe 
Comes bleatin till 6 him, owre the knowe, 7 
20 For bits o' bread ; 

An' down the briny pearls rowe 8 
For Mailie dead. 

She was nae get 9 o' moorlan' tips, 10 
Wi' tawted ket, 11 an' hairy hips ; 
25 For her forbears were brought in ships, 

Frae yont the Tweed : 
A bonier fleesh ne'er cross'd the clips 12 

Than Mailie 's dead. 

1 low-spirited. 2 know. 3 decorum. 4 inner room. 5 valley. 6 to. 
7 knoll. 8 roll. 9 offspring. i° rams. n matted fleece. 12 shears. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 9 

Wae worth 1 the man wha first did shape 
That vile, wanchancie 2 thing — a rape ! 
It makes guid fellows girn an' gape, 3 

Wi' chokin dread ; 
An' Robin's bonnet wave wi' crape, 5 

For Mailie dead. 

O a' ye Bards on bonie Doon ! 

An' wha on Ayr your chanters 4 tune ! 

Come, join the melancholious croon 

O' Robin's reed ! 10 

His heart will never get aboon — 5 

His Mailie 's dead. 

Farming was hard work for Burns ; he preferred the 
lyre to the plow. To show which class of men he belonged 
to he wrote the 15 



SONG, — GREEN GROW THE RASHES. 

Chorus. — Green grow the rashes, 6 O ! 
Green grow the rashes, O ! 

The sweetest hours that e'er I spend 
Are spent amang the lasses, O. 

There 's nought but care on ev'ry han', 20 

In every hour that passes, O : 
What signifies the life o' man, 

An 't were na for the lasses, O ? 

The war'ly 7 race may riches chase, 

An' riches still may fly them, O ; 2 5 

1 woe be to. 2 unlucky. 3 gnash the teeth. 4 pipes of a bagpipe. 

5 above. e rushes. 7 worldly. 



10 POEMS OF RQBEKT BURNS. 

An' tho' at last they catch them fast, 
Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O. 

But gie me a cannie x hour at e'en, 
My arms about my dearie, O ; 
5 An' war'ly cares, an' war'ly men, 

May a' gae tapsalteerie, 2 O. 

For you sae douce, 3 ye sneer at this ; 

Ye 're nought but senseless asses, O : 
The wisest man the warP e'er saw, 
J o He dearly lov'd the lasses O. 

Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears 
Her noblest work she classes, O : 

Her prentice han' she try'd on man, 
An' then she made the lasses, O. 

15 As these verses suggest, — he calls them the genuine 
language of his heart, — he turned instinctively from 
the grave, money-getting, place-seeking men to the gay 
group of pleasure-lovers. Yet the struggling peasant 
poet, always impatient of inequalities of rank, was often 

20 in the mood of 



MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN. 

A DIRGE. 

When chill November's surly blast 
Made fields and forests bare, 

One ev'ning as I wander'd forth 
Along the banks of Ayr, 

1 quiet. 2 topsy-turvy. 3 solemn. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 11 

I spied a man, whose aged step 

Seem'd weary, worn with care ; 
His face was furrow'd o'er with years, 

And hoary was his hair. 

" Young stranger, whither wand'rest thou ? " 5 

Began the rev'rend sage ; 
" Dost thirst of wealth thy step constrain, 

Or youthful pleasure's rage ? 
Or haply, prest with cares and woes, 

Too soon thou hast began 10 

To wander forth, with me to mourn 

The miseries of man. 

" The sun that overhangs yon moors, 

Out-spreading far and wide, 
Where hundreds labour to support 15 

A haughty lordling's pride ; — 
I 've seen yon weary winter-sun 

Twice forty times return ; 
And ev'ry time has added proofs, 

That man was made to mourn. 20 

" O man ! while in thy early years, 

How prodigal of time ! 
Mis-spending all thy precious hours — 

Thy glorious, youthful prime ! 
Alternate follies take the sway ; 25 

Licentious passions burn ; 
Which tenfold force gives Nature's law 

That man was made to mourn. 

" Look not alone on youthful prime, 

Or manhood's active might ; 30 



12 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Man then is useful to his kind, 



l i 



Supported is his right : 
But see him on the edge of life, 
With cares and sorrows worn, 
5 Then Age and Want, oh ! ill-match'd pair 

Shew man was made to mourn. 

" A few seem favourites of fate, 

In pleasure's lap carest ; 
Yet, think not all the rich and great 
io Are likewise truly blest : 

But, oh ! what crowds in ev'ry land 

All wretched and forlorn, 
Thro' weary life this lesson learn, 

That man was made to mourn. 

15 " Many and sharp the num'rous ills 

Inwoven with our frame ! 
More pointed still we make ourselves, 

Regret, remorse, and shame ! 
And man, whose heaven-erected face 
20 The smiles of love adorn, — 

Man's inhumanity to man 

Makes countless thousands mourn ! 

" See yonder poor, o'erlabour'd wight, 
So abject, mean, and vile, 
25 Who begs a brother of the earth 

To give him leave to toil ; 
And see his lordly fellow-worm 

The poor petition spurn, 
Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife 
30 And helpless offspring mourn. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 13 

" If I 'm design'd yon lordling's slave, 

By Nature's law design'd, 
Why was an independent wish 

E'er planted in my mind ? 
If not, why am I subject to 5 

His cruelty, or scorn ? 
Or why has man the will and pow'r 

To make his fellow mourn ? 

" Yet, let not this too much, my son, 

Disturb thy youthful breast;. I0 

This partial view of human-kind 

Is surely not the last ! 
The poor, oppressed, honest man, 

Had never, sure, been born, 
Had there not been some recompense *5 

To comfort those that mourn ! 

" O Death ! the poor man's dearest friend, 1 

The kindest and the best ! 
Welcome the hour my aged limbs 

Are laid with thee at rest ! 20 

The great, the wealthy fear thy blow, 

From pomp and pleasure torn ; 
But, oh ! a blest relief to those 

That weary-laden mourn ! " 

Up to the age of twenty-five, Burns was without serious 25 
aim in life. About that time he wrote of his wish to be a 
poet. "The romantic woodlands & sequestered scenes 
of Aire ... & the winding sweep of Doon " needed a 

1 " A World TO Come ! is the only genuine balm for an agonising heart, 
torn to pieces in the wrench of parting forever (to mortal view) with friends, 
inmates of the bosom and dear to the soul." — Burns to Mrs. Dunlop, rjqo. 



14 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

singer. " Alas ! I am far unequal to the task, both in 
native genius and education. Obscure I am & obscure I 
must be, though no young Poet nor Young Soldier's heart 
ever beat more fondly for fame than mine." A few 
5 months later appeared the 



SONG, — RANTIN ROVIN ROBIN. 

There was a lad was born in Kyle, 1 
But whatna 2 day o' whatna style, 3 
I doubt it 's hardly worth the while 
To be sae nice wi' Robin. 

10 Chorus. — Robin was a rovin boy, 

Rantin, 4 rovin, rantin, rovin ; 
Robin was a rovin boy, 
Rantin, rovin Robin. 

Our monarch's hindmost year but ane 
15 Was five-and-twenty days begun, 5 

'T was then a blast o' Janwar' win' 
Blew hansel 6 in on Robin. 

The gossip 7 keekit 8 in his loof, 9 
Quo' scho, 10 " Wha lives will see the proof, 
20 This waly n boy will be nae coof ; 12 

I think we '11 ca' him Robin. 



1 the central district of Ayrshire, between the Irvine and the Doon. 2 what 
particular. 3 whether " old style " or " new style." 4 full of animal 
spirits. 5 George II ; 25 January, 1759. 6 first money, or gift, 

bestowed on a special occasion. " sponsor in baptism. 8 peeped. 

9 palm. 10 she. n goodly. i- fool. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 15 

" He '11 hae misfortunes great and sma', 
But aye a heart aboon them a' ; 
He '11 be a credit till x us a' — 
We '11 a' be proud o' Robin. 

" But sure as three times three mak nine, 5 

I see by ilka 2 score and line, 
This chap will dearly like our kin', 
So leeze 3 me on thee, Robin." 

Without overestimating his ability, Burns was coura- 
geous and confident. Within little more than a year he io 
wrote most of the poems that have made him famous, and 
about this time he began to think of publishing. 

During the autumn and winter seasons some of his best 
verses were composed while he was holding the plow. 
On one occasion the boy who was guiding the horses ran 15 
after a field mouse to kill it with the "pattle." Burns 
promptly called him back, and soon afterward read to 
him the poem 



TO A MOUSE, 

ON TURNING UP HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH, 
NOVEMBER, I 785. 

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie, 

Oh, what a panic 's in thy breastie ! 20 

Thou need na start awa sae hasty 

Wi' bickerin brattle ! 4 
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee 

Wi' murd'rin pattle ! 5 

1 to. 2 each, every. 3 blessings on. 4 hasty scamper. 5 a spade 

to remove clay that clung to the plowshare. 




16 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

I 'm truly sorry man's dominion 
Has broken nature's social union, 
An' justifies that ill opinion 

Which makes thee startle 
5 At me, thy poor earth-born companion, 

An' fellow-mortal ! 

I doubt na, whyles, 1 but thou may*thieve : 
What then ? poor beastie, thou maun live ! 
A daimen icker in a thrave 2 
io 'S a sma' request ; 

I '11 get a blessin wi' the lave, 3 
An' never miss 't ! 

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin ! 
Its silly 4 wa's 5 the win's 6 are strewin ! 
15 An' naething, now, to big 7 a new ane, 

O' foggage 8 green ! 
An' bleak December's winds ensuin 

Baith snell 9 an' keen ! 

Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste, 
20 An' weary winter comin fast, 

An' cozie here beneath the blast 

Thou thought to dwell, 
Till crash ! the cruel coulter past 

Out thro' thy cell. 

25 That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble 

Has cost thee mony a weary nibble ! 
Now thou 's turn'd out for 10 a' thy trouble, 

1 sometimes. 2 an occasional ear of grain in twenty-four sheaves. 

3 remainder. 4 weak. 6 walls. 6 winds. 7 build. 

8 rank grass. 9 biting. 10 in return for. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 17 

But 1 house or hald, 2 
To thole 3 the winter's sleety dribble 
An' cranreuch 4 cauld ! 

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane 5 

In proving foresight may be vain : 5 

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 

Gang aft a-gley, 
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain 

For promis'd joy. 

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me ! 10 

The present only toucheth thee : 
But, och ! I backward cast my ee 

On prospects drear! 
An' forward, tho' I canna see, 

I guess an' fear ! 15 



From this expression of the poet's fine, sincere sym- 
pathy with nature we turn to a picture of family life. It 
becomes doubly attractive when we consider it as a faith- 
ful revelation of Scottish home life, family devotion and 
patriotism. And we cherish it all the more because it 20 
gives us a glimpse of Burns's own father and his home. 
After the father's death Burns, as the oldest son, took 
his place at devotions. He conducted the family wor- 
ship every night when at home during his residence at 
Mossgiel. 25 

1 without. 2 holding. 3 endure. 4 hoarfrost. 5 not alone. 



18 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 



THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. 

INSCRIBED TO ROBERT AIKEN, ESQ. 

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 
Their homely joys and destiny obscure ; 

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 

The short and simple annals of the poor. — Gray. 

My lov'd, my honour'd, much respected friend ! 

No mercenary bard his homage pays ; 
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end : 
My dearest meed a friend's esteem and praise. 
5 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, 

The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene ; 

The native feelings strong, the guileless ways ; 
What Aiken in a cottage would have been ; 
Ah ! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween ! 

10 November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh, 
The short'ning winter day is near a close ; 
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh, 

The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose ; 
The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes, — 
15 This night his weekly moil 1 is at an end, — 

Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, 
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend. 

At length his lonely cot appears in view, 
20 Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; 

Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher 2 through 

To meet their dad, wi' flichterin 3 noise an' glee. 

His wee bit ingle, 4 blinkin bonilie, 

1 toil. 2 stagger. 3 fluttering. 4 fireplace. 



IO 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 19 

His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wine's smile, 

The lisping infant prattling on his knee, 

Does a' his weary kiaugh 1 and care 2 beguile, 

An' makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil. 

Belyve, 3 the elder bairns come drappin in, 

At service out amang the farmers roun' ; 
Some ca the pleugh, some herd, some tentie 4 rin 

A cannie 5 errand to a neibor toun : 6 

Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown, 
In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her ee, 

Comes hame, perhaps to shew a braw new gown, 
Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee, 
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 

With joy unfeign'd brothers and sisters meet, 

An' each for other's weelfare kindly spiers : 7 l 5 

The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnotic'd fleet ; 

Each tells the uncos 8 that he sees or hears. 

The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years ; 
Anticipation forward points the view ; 

The mother, wi' her needle an' her sheers, 
Gars v} auld claes look amaist as weel 's the new ; 
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. 

Their master's an' their mistress's command 
The younkers a' are warned to obey ; 

An' mind their labours wi' an eydent 10 hand, 25 

An' ne'er, tho' out o' sight, to jauk 11 or play : 
" An' O ! be sure to fear the Lord alway, 

1 fret. 2 the original words, changed in a later edition to " carking cares/' 
3 presently. 4 attentive. 5 careful. 6 farm. 7 asks. 

8 news. 9 makes. 10 diligent. n trifle. 



20 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

An' mind your duty, duly, morn an' night ! 
Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray, 
Implore His counsel and assisting might : 
They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright ! " 

5 But hark ! a rap comes gently to the door. 

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, 
Tells how a neibor lad cam o'er the moor, 
To do some errands, and convoy her hame. 
The wily mother sees the conscious flame 
10 Sparkle in Jenny's ee, and flush her cheek; 

Wi' heart-struck, anxious care, inquires his name, 
While Jenny hafflins 1 is afraid to speak; 
Weel pleas'd the mother hears it's nae wild worthless rake. 

Wi' kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben, 2 
15 A strappin youth ; he takes the mother's eye; 

Blythe Jenny sees the visit 's no ill taen ; 

The father cracks 3 of horses, pleughs, and kye. 
The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, 
But, blate 4 and laithf u', 5 scarce can weel behave ; 
20 The mother wi' a woman's wiles 6 can spy 

What maks the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave, 
Weel pleas'd to think her bairn 's respected like the lave. 7 

O happy love ! where love like this is found ! 
O heart-felt raptures ! bliss beyond compare ! 
25 I 've paced much this weary, mortal round, 

And sage experience bids me this declare — 
" If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, 
One cordial in this melancholy vale, 

'T is when a youthful, loving, modest pair, 
30 In other's arms breathe out the tender tale, 

Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev'ning gale." 

1 partly. 2 in. 3 talks. 4 bashful. 5 s hy. penetration. 7 rest. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 21 

Is there, in human form, that bears a heart, 

A wretch ! a villain ! lost to love and truth ! 
That can with studied, sly, ensnaring art 

Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth ? 

Curse on his perjur'd arts ! dissembling smooth ! 5 

Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd ? 

Is there no pity, no relenting ruth, 
Points to the parents fondling o'er their child, 
Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their distraction wild ? 

But now the supper crowns their simple board, 10 

The halesome parritch, 1 chief of Scotia's food ; 
The sowpe 2 their only hawkie 3 does afford, 

That yont the hallan 4 snugly chows her cud. 

The dame brings forth, in complimental mood, 
To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck 5 fell, 15 

An' aft he's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid; 7 
The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell, 
How 'twas a towmond 8 auld, sin' lint was i' the bell. 9 

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face, 

They round the ingle form a circle wide ; 20 

The sire turns o'er with patriarchal grace 

The big ha'-bible, 10 ance his father's pride ; 

His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, 
His lyart haffets 11 wearing thin and bare; 

Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, 25 

He wales 12 a portion with judicious care ; 
And, " Let us worship God," he says with solemn air. 

They chant their artless notes in simple guise; 
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim : 

1 porridge. 2 liquid food. 3 cow. 4 porch. 5 well-spared cheese. 

c often. 1 good. 8 twelvemonth. 9 flax in flower. 1° large family- 
Bible kept in the hall or chief room. n gray side-locks. 12 selects. 



22 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Perhaps Dimdee's 1 wild- warbling measures rise, 
Or plaintive Martyrs, 1 worthy of the name, 
Or noble Elgin l beets 2 the heaven-ward flame, 
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays. 
5 Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame ; 

The tickl'd ear no heart-felt raptures raise ; 
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise. 

The priest-like father reads the sacred page, — 
How Abram was the friend of God on high ; 
10 Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage 
With Amalek's ungracious progeny ; 
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie 
Beneath the stroke of heaven's avenging ire ; 
Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; 
15 Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; 

Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. 

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme, — 

How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed ; 
How He, who bore in heav'n the second name, 
20 Had not on earth whereon to lay His head : 

How His first followers and servants sped ; 3 
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land : 4 

How he, who lone in Patmos banished, 
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, 
25 And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced by Heav'n's 
command. 5 

Then kneeling down to Heaven's eternal King, 

The saint, the father, and the husband prays : 
Hope " springs exulting on triumphant wing," 

1 favorite psalm tunes. 2 adds fuel to. 3 the Acts of the Apostles. 

4 the Epistles. 5 the Apocalypse. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 23 

That thus they all shall meet in future days : 

There ever bask in uncreated rays, 
No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear, 

Together hymning their Creator's praise, 
In such society, yet still more dear, 5 

While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere. 

Compar'd with this, how poor Religion's pride 

In all the pomp of method and of art, 
When men display to congregations wide 

Devotion's ev'ry grace except the heart ! 10 

The Pow'r, incens'd, the pageant will desert, 
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole ; 

But haply in some cottage far apart 
May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul, 
And in His book of life the inmates poor enrol. 15 

Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way ; 

The youngling cottagers retire to rest ; 
The parent-pair their secret homage pay, 

And proffer up to Heav'n the warm request, 

That He, who stills the raven's clam'rous nest 20 

And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride, 

Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best, 
For them and for their little ones provide ; 
But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside. 

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, 2 5 
That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad : 

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 
" An honest man 's the noblest work of God " : 1 

1 Cf. Fletcher's 

Man is his own star ; and that soul that can 
Be honest is the only perfect man, 

and Pope, Essay o?i A/an, 24;. 



24 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

And certes, in fair Virtue's heavenly road, 
The cottage leaves the palace far behind : 

What is a lordling's pomp ? a cumbrous load, 
Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, 
5 Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin'd ! 

Scotia ! my dear, my native soil ! 

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent ! 
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content ! 
10 And, oh ! may Heaven their simple lives prevent 

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile ! 

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, 
A virtuous populace may rise the while, 
And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov'd isle. 

15 O Thou ! who pour'd the patriotic tide 

That stream'd thro' Wallace's 1 undaunted heart, 
Who dar'd to nobly stem tyrannic pride, 
Or nobly die, the second glorious part, — 
(The patriot's God peculiarly thou art, 
20 His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward !) 
O never, never Scotia's realm desert, 
But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard, 
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard! 

In this triumph of piety and morality over poverty 

25 Burns gives us a part of his philosophy of life. Like 

Goldsmith, he believes that happiness depends not on 

wealth or rank, but on the heart. In the Epistle to Davie 

he says : 

If happiness hae not her seat 
30 And centre in the breast, 

1 the outlaw knight, William Wallace, who in 1297 roused the Scots to 
demand their freedom ; the national hero. 



REPRESENTATIVE FOE MS. 25 

We may be wise, or rich, or great, 
But never can be blest : 

Nae treasures, nor pleasures, 

Could make us happy lang ; 
The heart ay 's the part ay, 5 

That makes us right or wrang. 

Sainte-Beuve says that in this poem Burns is not only 
picturesque but "cordial, moral, Christian, patriotic. His 
episode of Jenny introduces and personifies the chastity 
of emotion; the Bible, read aloud, casts a religious glow 10 
over the whole scene. Then come those lofty thoughts 
upon the greatness of old Scotland, which is based on 
such home scenes as this." 

Burns included in his family the faithful companion 
whom he introduces in the poem 15 



THE AULD FARMER'S NEW-YEAR MORNING SAL- 
UTATION TO HIS AULD MARE, MAGGIE, 

ON GIVING HER THE ACCUSTOMED RIPP OF CORN TO HANSEL 
IN THE NEW YEAR. 

A guid New- Year I wish thee, Maggie ! 
Hae, there 's a ripp 1 to thy auld baggie : 2 
Tho' thou 's howe-backit 3 now, an' knaggie, 4 

I Ve seen the day 
Thou could hae gane like ony staggie 5 20 

Out-owre the lay. 6 

Tho' now thou 's dowie, 7 stiff, an' crazy, 
An' thy auld hide 's as white 's a daisie, 
I 've seen thee dappl't, sleek an' glaizie, 8 

1 handful. 2 stomach. 3 hollow-backed. 4 bony. 5 colt. 6 lea. 

"i low-spirited. 8 glossy. 



26 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

A bonie gray : 
He should been tight that daur't to raize thee, 1 
Ance in a day. 

Thou ance was i' the foremost rank, 
5 A filly buirdly, 2 steeve, 3 an' swank, 4 

An' set weel down a shapely shank 

As e'er tread yird ; 5 
An' could hae flown out-owre a stank 6 

Like ony bird. 

10 It's now some nine-and-twenty year 

Sin' thou was my guid-father's meere ; 7 
He gied me thee, o' tocher 8 clear, 

An' fifty mark ; 
Tho' it was sma', 't was weel won gear, 9 

J 5 An' thou was stark. 10 

When first I gaed to woo my Jenny, 
Ye then was trottin wi' your minnie : n 
Tho' ye was trickie, slee and funny, 

Ye ne'er was donsie; 12 
20 But namely, tawie, 13 quiet an' cannie, 14 

An' unco sonsie. 15 

That day ye pranc'd wi' mickle pride, 
When ye bure hame my bonie bride : 
An' sweet an' gracefu' she did ride, 
25 Wi' maiden air ! 

Kyle-Stewart I could bragged wide 16 
For sic a pair. 

1 He should have been girt for action that dared to excite thee. 2 strong. 

3 firm. 4 stately. 5 earth. 6 ditch. "> father-in-law's mare. 

8 dowry. 9 well-earned money. 10 strong. n mother. 12 mis- 
chievous. 13 tame. 14 safe. 15 very plump. 16 I could 
have challenged the country between the Irvine and the Ayr. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 27 

Tho' now ye dow 1 but hoyte an' hoble 2 
An' wintle 3 like a saumont-coble, 4 
That day ye was a jinker 5 noble 

For heels an' win' ! 6 
An' ran them till they a' did wauble 7 

Far, far behin' ! 

When thou an' I were young an' skiegh, 8 
An' stable meals at fairs were driegh, 9 
How thou wad prance an' snore an' skriegh 



10 



An' tak' the road ! 10 

es ran an' stood abie 
An' ca't 12 thee mad. 



Toun's bodies ran an' stood abiegh 11 



When thou was corn't an' I was mellow, 

We took the road ay like a swallow : 

At brooses 13 thou had ne'er a fellow 15 

For pith an' speed ; 
But ev'ry tail thou pay't them hollow, 

Whare'er thou gaed. 



&* 



The sma', droop-rumpl't, 14 hunter cattle 

Might aiblins 15 waur't 16 thee for a brattle ; 17 20 

But sax 18 Scotch mile thou try't their mettle 

An' gart 19 them whaizle : 20 
Nae whip nor spur, but just a wattle 21 

O' saugh 22 or hazel. 

Thou was a noble fittie-lan' 23 25 

As e'er in tug or tow 24 was drawn ! 

1 can. 2 limp. 3 stagger. 4 salmon-boat. 5 runner. 6 wind. 

"> reel. s high-mettled. 9 tedious. 10 whinny. n out of 

the way. 12 called. 13 A broosc is a race at a country wedding. 

1 4 drooping at the crupper. 15 perhaps. 16 beat. 1T spurt. 

18 six. 19 made. 20 wheeze. 21 switch. 22 willow. 
23 foot-the-land ; the near horse of the hinder pair in plowing, which does 

not step in the furrow. 24 rope. 



28 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Aft thee an' I, in aught hours' gaun 1 

On guid March-weather, 
Hae turn'd sax rood 2 beside our han' 

For days thegither. 

5 Thou never braing't 3 an' fetch't 4 an' flisket, 5 

But thy auld tail thou wad hae whisket 6 
An' spread abreed thy weel-fill'd brisket, 7 

Wi' pith an' pow'r, 
Till spritty knowes wad rair't and risket 

10 An' slypet owre. 8 

When frosts lay lang an' snaws were deep 
An' threaten'd labour back to keep, 
I gied thy cog a wee-bit heap 

Aboon the timmer : 9 
15 I ken'd my Maggie wad na sleep 

For that, 10 or simmer. 11 

In cart or car thou never reestet ; 
The steyest brae 12 thou wad hae faced it; 
Thou never lap 13 an' sten't an' breastet, 14 
20 Then stood to blaw ; 

But just thy step a wee thing hastet, 
Thou snoov 't awa. 15 

My pleugh is now thy bairn-time a', 16 
Four gallant brutes as e'er did draw ; 
25 Forbye 17 sax mae 18 I 've sell 't awa, 

1 eight hours' going. 2 six roods. 3 fretted. 4 raged. 5 kicked. 

6 lashed. 7 breast. 8 " Till hillocks, where the earth was full of 

tough-rooted plants, would have given forth a cracking sound, and the 
clods fallen gently over." — Shairp. 9 filled thy measure of oats to 

overflowing. 10 " On account of the late season " the spring work 

would be harder. n before summer. 12 steepest hill. ls leaped. 
14 reared. 15 moved on steadily. 16 My plowing team of four 

horses are now thine offspring. 1" besides. * 8 six more. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 29 

That thou hast nurst : 
They drew me thretteen * pund an' twa, 
The vera warst. 

Mony a sair daurg 2 we twa hae wrought, 

An' wi' the weary warP fought ! 5 

An' mony an anxious day I thought 

We wad be beat ! 
Yet here to crazy age we 're brought 

Wi' something yet. 

And think na, my auld trusty servan', 10 

That now, perhaps, thou 's less deservin, 
And thy auld days may end in stervin ; 

For my last fou, 3 
A heapit stimpart, 4 I '11 reserve ane, 

Laid by for you. 15 

We 've worn to crazy years thegither ; 
We '11 toyte 5 about wi' ane anither ; 
Wi' tentie 6 care I '11 flit thy tether 

To some hained rig, 7 
Whare ye may noble rax 8 your leather, 20 

Wi' sraa' fatigue. 

Dow says this is "the So/in Anderson, my jo, of Burns's 
poems. It portrays a long and tried friendship and those 
relations of human intimacy that are common between the 
country people of Scotland and their domestic animals." 25 

Know Burns, know his dog. We are quite ready to 
make the acquaintance of a favorite dog, Luath. In 
order to give Luath an opportunity to speak for himself 
the poet created an imaginary Caesar. 

1 thirteen. 2 heavy day's work. 3 measure of grain. 4 quarter of a peck. 
5 totter. e heedful. 7 reserved piece of ground. 8 stretch. 



30 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

THE TWA DOGS. 

A TALE. 

'T was in that place o' Scotland's isle, 
That bears the name o' auld King Coil, 1 
Upon a bonie day in June, 
When wearin' through the afternoon, 
5 Twa dogs that werena thrang 2 at hame 

Forgathered ance upon a time. 

The first I '11 name, they ca'd him Caesar, 
Was keepit for his Honour's pleasure ; 
His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs, 3 
io Showed he was nane o' Scotland's dogs ; 

But whalpit 4 some place far abroad, 
Whare sailors gang to fish for cod. 5 

His locked, letter'd, braw brass collar 
Show'd him the gentleman and scholar ; 

15 But though he was o' high degree, 

The fient a pride 6 — nae pride had he; 7 
But wad hae spent an hour caressin, 
Even wi' a tinkler-gypsy's messan : 8 
At kirk or market, mill or smiddie, 9 

20 Nae tawted tyke, 10 though e'er sae duddie, 11 

But he wad stan't, 12 as glad to see him, 
And stroan't on stanes 13 and hillocks wi' him. 



1 Kylejcf. Rantin Rovin Robin, i. Tradition says the district derived its 
name from Coilus, " king of the Picts." 2 busy. 3 ears. * whelped. 
5 Newfoundland. G no pride whatever. "> Cf. Lines on an Inter- 

view with Lord Daer. 8 vagabond-gypsy's cur. 9 smithy. 

1° matted dog. n unkempt. 12 have stood. 13 stones. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 31 

The tither was a ploughman's collie, 
A rhymin, rantin, ravin billie, 1 
Wha for his friend and comrade had him, 
An' in his freaks had Luath ca'd him, 
After some dog in Highland sang, 2 5 

Was made lang syne, — Lord knows how lang. 

He was a gash 3 an' faithfir tyke, 
As ever lap 4 a sheugh 5 or dike. 6 
His honest, sonsie, 7 baws'nt face 8 

Ay gat him friends in ilka place ; 10 

His breast was white, his touzie 9 back 
Weel clad wi' coat o' glossy black ; 
His gawcie 10 tail wi' upward curl 
Hung owre his hurdies 11 wi' a swirl. 

Nae doubt but they were fain 12 o' ither, 15 

An' unco pack an' thick thegither ; 
Wi' social nose whyles 13 snuff'd 14 and snowket ; 
Whyles mice and moudieworts 15 they howket; 16 
Whyles scour'd awa in lang excursion 
An' worry'd ither in diversion; 17 20 

Until wi' damn weary grown, 
Upon a knowe 18 they sat them down, 
An' there began a lang digression 
About the 'lords o' the creation.' 

CtESAR. 

I 've aften wondered, honest Luath, 25 

W 7 hat sort o' life poor dogs like you have ; 

1 fellow. 2 Cuchullin's dog in Ossian's Fingal. — B. 3 wise. 4 leaped. 
5 ditch. ° wall. 7 handsome. s with a white stripe down the 

face. 9 shaggy. 10 big and lusty. n hips. 12 fond. 

]3 sometimes. 14 scented. Vo moles. 16 dug up. !" romping. 
18 knoll. 



32 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

And when the gentry's life I saw, 
What way poor bodies liv'd ava. 1 

Our laird gets in his racket rents, 
His coals, his kain,' 2 and a' his stents; 3 

5 He rises when he likes himsel ; 

His flunkies answer at the bell ; 
He ca's his coach, he ca's his horse 5 
He draws a bonie silken purse 
As lang 's my tail, where through the steeks 4 

10 The yellow-lettered Geordie keeks. 5 

Frae morn to e'en it 's nought but toilin, 

At bakin, roastin, fryin, boilin ; 

And though the gentry first are stechin, 6 

Yet ev'n the ha'-folk 7 fill their pechan 8 
15 Wi' sauce, ragouts, an' sic like trashtrie, 

That 's little short o' downright wastrie. 

Our whipper-in, wee blastit wonner, 9 

Poor worthless elf, it eats a dinner 

Better than ony tenant man 
20 His Honour has in a' the Ian'; 

And what poor cot-folk pit 10 their painch 11 in, 

I own it 's past my comprehension. 

LUATH. 

Trowth, Caesar, whiles they're fash't 12 eneugh; 
A cotter howkin 13 in a sheugh, 14 
25 Wi' dirty stanes biggin 15 a dyke, 10 

Barin a quarry, and sic like ; 

1 at all. 2 farm produce paid as rent. 3 taxes. 4 stitches. 5 guinea 
peeps. 6 stuffing. 7 kitchen people. 8 belly. 9 shrivelled-up 

wonder. i° put. ll stomach. 12 troubled. 13 digging. 

14 ditch. 15 building. 16 wall. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 33 

Himsel, a wife, he thus sustains, 

A smytrie o' wee duddie weans, 1 

And nought but his han'-daurg 2 to keep 

Them right and tight in thack and rape. 3 

And when they meet wi' sair disasters, 5 

Like loss o' health or want o' masters, 
Ye maist wad think, a wee touch langer, 
And they maun starve o' cauld and hunger; 
But how it comes, I never kenn'd yet, 
They're maistly wonderfu' contented : 10 

And buirdly chiels 4 an' clever hizzies 5 
Are bred in sic a way as this is. 

OESAR. 

But then to see how you 're neglecket, 
How huff'd and cuff'd and disrespecket ! 
Lord, man, our gentry care as little 15 

For delvers, ditchers and sic cattle ; 
They gang as saucy by poor folk, 
As I wad by a stinkin brock. ( 



6 



I 've noticed, on our Laird's court-day, — 7 
And mony a time my heart 's been wae, — 20 

Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, 
How they maun thole 8 a factor's snash: 9 
He '11 stamp and threaten, curse, and swear 
He '11 apprehend them, poind 10 their gear ; n 



1 a number of little ragged children. 2 single-handed day's labor. 3 thatch 
and rope to bind it, i.e., " the necessaries of life." 4 stalwart men. 

5 women. 6 badger. 7 The factor is the landlord's agent, to whom 
on court-day the tenants pay their rent. 8 endure. 9 abuse. 

1° impound. n goods. 



34 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS, 

While they maun stan' wi' aspect humble, 
And hear it a', and fear and tremble ! 

I see how folk live that hae riches ; 
But surely poor folk maun be wretches ! 

LUATH. 

S They 're no sae wretched 's ane wad think : 

Tho' constantly on poortith's 1 brink, 
They 're sae accustom'd wi' the sight, 
The view o 't gies them little fright. 

Then chance and fortune are sae guided, 
10 They 're aye in less or mair provided ; 

And tho' fatigu'd wi' close employment, 
A blink o' rest 's a sweet enjoyment. 

The dearest comfort o' their lives, 
Their grushie weans 2 and faithfu' wives ; 
15 The prattling things are just their pride, 

That sweetens a' their fireside. 

And whiles twalpennie worth o' nappy 3 
Can mak the bodies unco 4 happy : 
They lay aside their private cares, 
20 To mind the Kirk and State affairs ; 

They '11 talk o' patronage an' priests, 
Wi' kindling fury i' their breasts, 
Or tell what new taxation 's comin, 
An' ferlie 5 at the folk in Lon'on. 

25 As bleak-fac'd Hallowmas returns, 

They get the jovial, ranting kirns, 6 

1 poverty. 2 thriving children. 3 ale. 4 very. 5 wonder. 

6 the merry harvest-home rejoicings ; rustic feasts. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 35 

When rural life o' ev'ry station 

Unite in common recreation ; 

Love blinks, Wit slaps, 1 an' social Mirth 

Forgets there 's Care upo' the earth. 

That merry day the year begins, 5 

They bar the door on frosty winds; 
The nappy reeks 2 wi' mantlin ream 3 
An' sheds a heart-inspirin steam ; 
The luntin 4 pipe an' sneeshin mill 5 
Are handed round wi' right guid will ; 10 

The cantie 6 auld folks crackin crouse, 7 
The young anes rantin 8 thro' the house, — ■ 
My heart has been sae fain to see them, 
That I for joy hae barket wi' them. 

Still it's owre true that ye hae said, 15 

Sic game is now owre aften play'd. 
There 's monie a creditable stock 
O' decent, honest, fawsont 9 folk 
Are riven 10 out baith root an' branch, 
Some rascal's pridefu' greed to quench, 20 

Wha thinks to knit himsel the faster 
In favour wi' some gentle master, 11 
Wha, aiblins thrang a-parliamentin, 12 
For Britain's guid his saul 13 indentin — 

CiESAR. 

Haith, 14 lad, ye little ken about it ; 25 

For Britain's guid ! guid faith ! I doubt it. 

1 shines forth. 2 ale smokes. 3 froth. 4 smoking. 5 snuffbox. 6 cheery. 
" talking briskly. s frolicking. 9 seemly. 1° torn. n master of 
gentle birth ; the laird. The rascal is the factor. 12 perhaps busy in 
Parliament. 13 SO ul. 14 faith. 



36 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Say rather, gaun x as Premiers lead him, 
An' saying ay or no 's they bid him : 
At operas an' plays parading, 
Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading : 
5 Or maybe, in a frolic daft, 2 

To Hague or Calais taks a waft, 
To mak a tour an' tak a whirl 
To learn bon ton an' see the worP. 

There, at Vienna or Versailles, 
io He rives his father's auld entails ; 3 

Or by Madrid he taks the rout 4 



To thrum guitars an' fecht 5 wi' nowt ; 



6 



Or down Italian vista startles, 
Whore-hunting amang groves o' myrtles ; 
15 Then bouses drumly 7 German-water, 

To mak himsel look fair and fatter, 
And clear the consequential sorrows, 
Love-gifts of Carnival signoras. 

For Britain's guid ! — for her destruction ! 
20 Wi' dissipation, feud, and faction. 

LUATH. 

Hech man ! dear sirs ! is that the gate 8 
They waste sae mony a braw 9 estate ? 
Are we sae foughten 10 and harass'd 
For gear u to gang that gate 12 at last ? 

1 going. 2 mad. 3 Entailed real estate in Britain must pass to the next 
male heir. An entail can be broken by an act of Parliament. Burns 
here refers, says Wallace, to an extravagant heir who would rive (liter- 
ally "tear") the entail so that he might burden the estate with debt. 
4 road. 5 fight. 6 bullocks. The word " nowt " [cattle, neat] takes 
all the romance from bull-fighting. — Dow. 7 drinks muddy. 8 style. 
9 fine. 10 troubled. n wealth. 12 road. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 37 

O would they stay aback frae courts 
An' please themsels wi' countra sports, 
It wad for ev'ry ane be better, 
The Laird, the Tenant, an' the Cotter ! 
For thae frank, rantin, ramblin billies, 5 

Fient haet 1 o' them 's ill-hearted fellows : 
Except for breakin o' their timmer, 2 
Or speakin lightly o' their limmer, 3 
Or shootin o' a hare or moor-cock, 
The ne'er-a-bit they 're ill to poor folk. 10 

But will ye tell me, Master Caesar, 
Sure great folk's life 's a life o' pleasure ? 
Nae cauld nor hunger e'er can steer 4 them, 
The vera thought o 't need na fear them. 

CESAR. 

Lord, man, were ye but whyles whare I am, 15 
The gentles ye wad ne'er envy 'em. 

It 's true, they need na starve or sweat 
Thro' winter's cauld or simmer's heat ; 
They 've nae sair wark to craze their banes, 
An' fill auld age wi' grips an' granes : 5 20 

But human bodies are sic fools, 
For a' their colleges and schools, 
That when nae real ills perplex them, 
They mak enow themselves to vex them ; 
An' ay the less they hae to sturt 6 them, 25 

In like proportion less will hurt them. 

A country fellow at the pleugh, 
His acres tilPd, he 's right eneugh ; 

1 not a bit. 2 cutting down their timber. 3 hussy. 4 bother. 

5 groans. ° trouble. 



38 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

A country girl at her wheel, 
Her dizzens 1 done, she's unco weel : 
But gentlemen, an' ladies warst, 
Wi' ev'n down want o' wark are curst. 
5 They loiter, loungin, lank, an' lazy ; 

Tho' deil-haet 2 ails them, yet uneasy : 
Their days insipid, dull, an' tasteless ; 
Their nights unquiet, lang, an' restless; 

An' ev'n their sports, their balls an' races, 
10 Their galloping thro' public places, — 

There 's sic parade, sic pomp, an' art, 
The joy can scarcely reach the heart. 

The men cast out in party-matches, 3 
Then sowther 4 a' in deep debauches. 
15 Ae night, they're mad wi' drink an' whoring, 

Niest 5 day their life is past enduring. 

The Ladies arm-in-arm in clusters, 

As great an' gracious a' as sisters ; 

But hear their absent thoughts o' ither, 
20 They 're a' run deils an' jads 6 thegither. 

Whiles/ o'er the wee bit cup and platie, 

They sip the scandal-potion pretty ; 

Or lee-lang 8 nights, wi' crabbet 9 leuks, 

Pore owre the devil's pictur'd beuks ; 10 
25 Stake on a chance a farmer's stackyard, 11 

And cheat like ony unhang'd blackguard. 

There's some exceptions, man an' woman; 
But this is gentry's life in common. 

1 " dozens " of hanks of thread to be wound for weaving. — Dow. 2 nothing. 
3 quarrel. 4 reconcile. 5 next. 6 downright devils and wicked 

women. " sometimes. 8 livelong. 9 sour. 10 cards. n I.e., the 
value of a whole year's crop. — Dow. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 39 

By this, the sun was out o' sight, 
And darker gloaming brought the night : 
The bum-clock 1 humm'd wi' lazy drone ; 2 
The kye 3 stood rowtin 4 i' the loan ; 5 
When up they gat, and shook their lugs, 6 5 

Rejoic'd they were na men but dogs ; 
And each took aff his several way, 
Resolv'd to meet some ither day. 

Caesar gave the cotter's dog considerable enlightening 
information — enough, one would think, to satisfy him that 10 
the cotter's lot was by no means to be despised ; but, real 
dogs as they are, they go off rejoicing that they are not 
men. 

That Burns gets the point of view of man, beast, or 
demon ; that his sympathy is boundless, is most pointedly 15 
suggested by these lines to the deil : 

But fare you vveel, auld Nickie-ben! 
O wad ye tak a thought an' men' ! 
Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — 

Still hae a stake : 20 

I 'm wae to think upo' yon den, 

Ev'n for your sake ! 

In 1786 Burns contracted with Jean Armour a marriage 
which, though irregular, he considered legal ; but her 
parents, who would not listen to the union, did all they 25 
could to keep husband and wife apart. Burns felt dis- 
graced ; it was a critical period ; painfully conscious of his 
faults, yet keenly alive to his temptations, he felt the need 
of pleading his own cause in an 

1 beetle. 2 " The beetle wheels his droning flight " in Gray's Elegy. 
3 cows. 4 lowing. 5 ' Loan ' means here an opening between fields of 
corn near, or leading to, the homestead, where cows are milked. — Wallace. 
6 ears. 



40 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

ADDRESS TO THE UNCO GUID, OR THE 
RIGIDLY RIGHTEOUS. 

My son, these maxims make a rule, 

And lump them aye thegither ; 
The Rigid Righteous is a fool, 

The Rigid Wise anither : 
The cleanest corn that e'er was dight, 1 

May hae some pyles o' caff in ; 2 
So ne'er a fellow-creature slight 

For random fits o' daffin.3 — Solomon, Eccles. vii, 16. 

ye wha are sae guid yoursel, 
Sae pious and sae holy, 

Ye 've nought to do but mark and tell 

Your neibour's fauts and folly ! 
5 Whase life is like a well-gaun mill, 

Supply'd wi' store o' water, 
The heapet happer 's 4 ebbing still, 

And still the clap plays clatter, — 

Here me, ye venerable core, 5 
10 As counsel for poor mortals, 

That frequent pass douce 6 Wisdom's door 
For glaiket 7 Folly's portals ; 

1 for their thoughtless, careless sakes 

Would here propone defences — 
15 Their donsie 8 tricks, their black mistakes, 

Their failings and mischances. 

Ye see your state wi' theirs compar'd, 

And shudder at the nifTer ; 9 
But cast a moment's fair regard, 
20 What maks the mighty differ ? 

1 thrashed. 2 grains of chaff. 3 merriment, folly. 4 hopper. 5 folk. 
6 grave. 7 giddy. 8 wicked. 9 exchange. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 41 

Discount what scant occasion gave, 

That purity ye pride in, 
And (what 's aft mair than a' the lave *) 

Your better art o' hidin. 



Think, when your castigated pulse 5 

Gies now and then a wallop, 2 
What ragings must his veins convulse 

That still eternal gallop : 
Wi' wind and tide fair i' your tail, 

Right on ye scud your sea-way; IO 

But in the teeth o' baith to sail, 

It maks an unco 3 leeway. 

See Social Life and Glee sit down, 

« All joyous and unthinking, 
Till, quite transmugrify'd, they're grown 15 

Debauchery and Drinking : 
O would they stay to calculate 

Th' eternal consequences ; 
Or — your more dreaded hell to state — 

Damnation of expenses! 20 

Ye high, exalted, virtuous Dames, 

Tied up in godly laces, 
Before you gie poor Frailty names, 

Suppose a change o' cases : 
A dear lov'd lad, convenience snug, 2 5 

A treacherous inclination — 
But, let me whisper i' your lug, 4 

Ye 're aiblins 5 nae temptation. 

Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister woman ; 3° 

1 rest. 2 quick, agitated movement. 3 unusual. 4 ear. 6 perhaps 



42 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Tho' they may gang a kennin l wrang, 

To step aside is human : 
One point' must still be greatly dark, 

The moving Why they do it ; 
5 And just as lamely can ye mark, 

How far perhaps they rue it. 

Who made the heart, 't is He alone 

Decidedly can try us, 
He knows each chord, its various tone, 
io Each spring, its various bias : 

Then at the balance, let 's be mute, 

We never can adjust it ; 
What 's done we partly can compute, 

But know not what 's resisted. 

15 Has he not stated the case so well that we do not need 
to speak in his behalf ? 

Those of us who are in the habit of thinking we are 
" unco guid " may well consider that we are somewhat 
" indebted to the world's good opinion because the world 

20 does not know all." Robert Louis Stevenson, whose plain 
statements of disagreeable truths about Burns never sug- 
gest that he is winking at weaknesses, says : " Alas ! I 
fear every man and woman of us is 'greatly dark' to all 
their neighbours, from the day of birth until death re- 

25 moves them, in their greatest virtues as well as in their 
saddest faults ; and we, who have been trying to read the 
character of Burns, may take home the lesson and be 
gentle in our thoughts." 

Ewe, mare, dog and field-mouse had in turn been cele- 

30 brated by the poet. That he should recognize the louse as 

1 a little bit. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 43 

a fit subject for verse has distressed some persons, but one 
needs the entire poem in order to appreciate the immortal 
last stanza. 

TO A LOUSE. 

ON SEEING ONE ON A LADY'S BONNET AT CHURCH. 

Ha ! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin' ferlie ! * 

Your impudence protects you sairlie ; 2 5 

I canna say but ye strunt 3 rarely 

Owre gauze and lace ; 
Tho' faith ! I fear ye dine but sparely 

On sic a place. 

Ye ugly, creepin', blastet wonner, 4 10 

Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner, 
How daur ye set your fit 5 upon her, 

Sae fine a lady ? 
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner 

On some poor body. 15 

Swith ! 6 in some beggar's hauffet 7 squattle, 8 

Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle, 

There ye may creep, an' sprawl, an' sprattle, 9 

In shoals and nations ; 
Whaur horn 10 or bane ne'er dare unsettle 20 

Your thick plantations. 

Now haud you there, ye 're out o' sight, 
Below the fatt'rells, 11 snug an' tight ; 
Na, faith ye yet ! ye '11 no be right 

1 Where are you going, you crawling wonder ? 2 marvellously. 3 strut. 
4 blasted wonder. 5 foot. 6 begone ! r side of the head. 8 sprawl. 
9 scramble. 10 comb. n ribbon ends. 



44 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Till ye 've got on it — 
The vera tapmost, towrin' height 
O' Miss's bonnet. 

My sooth ! right bauld * ye set your nose out, 
5 As plump an' grey as ony groset : 2 

for some rank, mercurial rozet, 3 

Or fell, red smeddum, 4 

1 'd gie ye sic a hearty dose o 't, 

Wad dress your droddum ! 5 

io I wad na been surpris'd to spy 

You on an auld wife's flannen toy ; 6 
Or aiblins 7 some bit duddie 8 boy, 

On 's wyliecoat ; 9 
But Miss's fine Lunardi ! 10 fye ! 

15 How daur ye do 't ? 

O Jeany, dinna toss your head, 
An' set your beauties a' abreid ! n 
Ye little ken what cursed speed 

The blastie 's 12 makin' : 
20 Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread, 

Are notice takin. 13 

O wad some Power the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as ithers see us ! 
It wad frae mony a blunder free us, 
25 An' foolish notion : 

What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, 
And ev'n devotion ! 

1 bold. 2 gooseberry. 3 rosin. 4 powder. 5 breech. 6 old-fashioned cap. 
7 perhaps. 8 little ragged. 9 flannel vest. 10 balloon-shaped bonnet. 
U abroad. 12 as in the second stanza, a term of contempt ; strictly, 

"withered dwarf." 13 " I fear, from the way folk are winking and 

pointing in your direction, that they see what is the matter." — Wallace. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 45 

Of course a man who habitually went out into the fields 
to compose his poetry could not ignore inanimate nature. 
If the subject of the following verses calls to mind Words- 
worth's poems to the daisy and other flowers, we should 
remember that the Scottish plowman sang to his daisy 5 
first. 

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY, 

ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH, IN APRIL, 1 786. 

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, 
Thou 's met me in an evil hour ; 
For I maun crush amang the stoure 1 

Thy slender stem : 10 

To spare thee now is past my pow'r, 

Thou bonie gem. 

Alas ! it 's no thy neibor sweet, 

The bonie lark, companion meet, 

Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet 2 15 

Wi' spreckl'd breast, 
When upward-springing, blythe, to greet 

The purpling east. 

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north 

Upon thy early, humble birth ; 20 

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 

Amid the storm, 
Scarce rear'd above the parent-earth 

Thy tender form. 

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield 25 

High shelt'ring woods an' wa's 3 maun shield : 

1 dust. 2 wet. 3 walls. 



46 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

But thou, beneath the random bield ' 
O' clod or stane, 

Adorns the histie 2 stibble 3 -field 
Unseen, alane. 

5 There, in thy scanty mantle clad, 

Thy snawie 4 bosom sun-ward spread, 
Thou lifts thy unassuming head 

In humble guise ; 
But now the share uptears thy bed, 
10 And low thou lies ! 

Such is the fate of artless maid, 
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade ! 
By love's simplicity betray'd 

And guileless trust ; 
15 Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid 

Low i' the dust. 

Such is the fate of simple bard, 
On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd ! 
Unskilful he to note the card 5 
20 Of prudent lore, 

Till billows rage and gales blow hard, 

And whelm him o'er ! 

Such fate to suffering Worth is giv'n, 
Who long with wants and woes has striv'n, 
25 By human pride or cunning driv'n 

To mis'ry's brink ; 
Till, wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n, 

He ruin'd sink ! 

1 shelter. 2 barren. 3 stubble. 4 snowy. 5 chart. " Reason the 

card, but passion is the gale." — Pope. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 47 

Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, 
That fate is thine — no distant date ; 
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate, 

Full on thy bloom, 
Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight 5 

Shall be thy doom. 

Burns was having a hard fight. The Mossgiel farming 
had proved a failure. It looked as if Jean had deserted 
him once for all and as if the marriage was annulled. With 
wounded pride he looked for ' another wife ' and soon 10 
won the heart of Mary Campbell, of whom we know 
through tradition only. (See " Highland Mary " and " To 
Mary in Heaven.") This year, too, Burns had been 
censured by the kirk. The result was his satires on the 
Auld Licht clergy, which in turn met with local favor 15 
enough to encourage him to continue his writing. It 
seemed best to leave Scotland for the Indies, and he 
published a collection of poems to pay the expenses of 
the journey. The last poem in the volume speaks for 
itself as a revelation of the poet's heart of hearts : 20 

A BARD'S EPITAPH. 

Is there a whim-inspired fool, 

Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, 

Owre blate * to seek, owre proud to snool ? 2 — 

Let him draw near ; 
And owre this grassy heap sing dool, 3 25 

And drap a tear. 

Is there a bard of rustic song 

Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, 

1 bashful. 2 submit tamely. 3 lament. 



48 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

That weekly this area throng ? — 

Oh, pass not by ! 
But with a frater-feeling strong, 

Here heave a sigh. 

5 Is there a man whose judgment clear 

Can others teach the course to steer, 
Yet runs himself life's mad career 

Wild as the wave ? — 
Here pause — and, thro' the starting tear 

10 Survey this grave. 

The poor inhabitant below 
Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
And keenly felt the friendly glow, 
And softer flame ; 
15 But thoughtless follies laid him low, 

And stain'd his name ! 

Reader, attend ! whether thy soul 
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole, 
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole 
20 In low pursuit ; 

Know, prudent, cautious self-control 
Is wisdom's root. 

After a man has written such an epitaph for himself — 

so frankly disclosing and confessing his faults — it would 

25 seem to be in good taste for the critics to save their 

severest condemnation for one who is not so keenly 

sensible of his shortcomings. 

Soon afterward Burns met for the first time a member of 

the British aristocracy. Lord Daer so pleasantly surprised 

30 him that he at once acknowledged the unexpected in the 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 49 



LINES ON AN INTERVIEW WITH LORD DAER. 

This wot ye all whom it concerns, 
I, Rhymer Robin, alias Burns, 

October twenty-third, 
A ne'er-to-be-forgotten day, 
Sae far I sprachled 1 up the brae, 2 

I dinner'd wi' a Lord. 



I 've been at drucken 3 writers' feasts, 
Nay, been bitch-fou 'mang godly priests — 

Wi' rev'rence be it spoken ! — 
I 've even join'd the honour'd jorum, 4 
When mighty Squireships of the Quorum 5 

Their hydra drouth 6 did sloken. 7 



10 



But wi' a Lord — stand out my shin ! 8 
A Lord — a Peer — an Earl's son ! 

Up higher yet, my bonnet ! 1 S 

And sic a Lord — lang Scotch ells twa, 9 
Our Peerage he o'erlooks them a', 

As I look owre my sonnet. 

But O for Hogarth's magic pow'r 

To show Sir Bardie's willyart glow'r, 10 20 

And how he star'd and stammer'd, 
When goavan, 11 as if led wi' branks, 12 
An' stumpin on his ploughman shanks, 

He in the parlor hammer'd ! 

1 scrambled. 2 hill. 3 drunken. * punch-bowl. 5 some board or com- 
mittee representing the country gentlemen of Ayrshire.— Wallace. 
6 thirst. 7 slake. 8 as in a pompous stage-strut. — Dow. 9 six feet 
tall. 10 bewildered gaze. U staring stupidly. 12 bridle. 



50 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

I sidling shelter'd in a nook, 
An' at his Lordship steal't a look, 

Like some portentous omen ; 
Except good sense and social glee, 
5 An' (what surprised me) modesty, 

I marked nought uncommon. 

I watch'd the symptoms o' the great, 
The gentle pride, the lordly state, 

The arrogant assuming : 
io The fient a pride, nae pride had he, 1 

Nor sauce nor state that I could see, 

Mair than an honest ploughman. 

Then from his lordship I shall learn, 
Henceforth to meet with unconcern 
15 One rank as weel 's another : 

Nae honest worthy man need care 
To meet with noble youthful Daer, 

For he but meets a brother. 



The first volume was welcomed so heartily that Burns 
20 decided to remain on old Scotia's shores. He had 
attracted attention enough to make him more ambitious 
than ever for distinction as a poet ; he must go to Edin- 
burgh. A few days before starting he sent these lines 
to a gentleman in Ayr : 



1 ' Devil a bit of pride had he.' 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 51 



A WINTER NIGHT. 

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, 

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm ! 

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, 

Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you 

From seasons such as these? c„. v ~c D eat,c 

SHAKESPEARE. 

When biting Boreas, fell x and doure, 2 
Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r ; 
When Phoebus gies a short lived glow'r 3 

Far south the lift, 4 
Dim-darkening thro' the flaky show'r 5 

Or whirling drift ; 

Ae night the storm the steeples rocked, 
Poor Labour sweet in sleep was locked, 
While burns, 5 wi' snawy wreaths uprchoked, 

Wild-eddying swirl, 10 

Or, thro' the mining outlet bocked, 6 

Down headlong hurl : 

Listening the doors and winnocks 7 rattle, 

I thought me on the ourie 8 cattle, 

Or silly 9 sheep, wha bide this brattle 10 *5 

O' winter war, 
An' through the drift, deep-lairing, 11 sprattle 



,12 



Beneath a scaur 



13 



Ilk happin 14 bird — wee, helpless thing! — 
That in the merry months o' spring 20 

Delighted me to hear thee sing, 
What comes o' thee ? 

1 keen. 2 stubborn. 3 stare. 4 sky. 5 brooks. 6 belched. 7 windows. 
8 shivering. 9 helpless. 10 pelting. H sinking deep. 12 scramble. 
13 cliff. W hopping. 



52 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering 1 wing 
An' close thy ee ? 

Ev'n you on murd'ring errands toil'd, 
Lone from your savage homes exil'd, — 
5 The blood-stain'd roost an' sheep-cot spoil'd 

My heart forgets, 
While pitiless the tempest wild 

Sore on you beats. 

Now Phcebe, 2 in her midnight reign, 
io Dark muffled, viewed the dreary plain ; 
Still crowding thoughts, a pensive train, 

Rose in my soul, 
When on my ear this plaintive strain, 
Slow-solemn, stole : — 

15 " Blow, blow ye winds with heavier gust! 
And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost ! 
Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows ! 
Not all your rage, as now united, shows 
More hard unkindness, unrelenting, 
20 Vengeful malice, unrepenting, 

Than heaven-illumined man on brother man bestows ! 3 

" See stern Oppression's iron grip, 

Or mad Ambition's gory hand, 
Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip, 
25 Woe, Want, and Murder o'er a land ! 

1 shivering. 2 the moon. 

3 Cf. Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 
Thou art not so unkind 

As man's ingratitude ; . . . 
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 
That dost not bite so nigh 

As benefits forgot. — As You Like It, II : 7. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 53 

Ev'n in the peaceful rural vale, 

Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale : 
How pamper'd Luxury, Flatt'ry by her side, 

The parasite empoisoning her ear, 

With all the servile wretches in the rear, 5 

Looks o'er proud Property, extended wide ; 

And eyes the simple, rustic hind, 

Whose toil upholds the glitt'ring show — 

A creature of another kind, 

Some coarser substance, unrefin'd — 10 

Plac'd for her lordly use, thus far, thus vile, below ! 

" Where, where is Love's fond, tender throe, 
With lordly Honour's lofty brow, 

The pow'rs you proudly own ? 
Is there, beneath Love's noble name, 15 

Can harbour, dark, the selfish aim, 

To bless himself alone ? 
Mark Maiden-Innocence a prey 

To love-pretending snares : 
This boasted Honour turns away, 20 

Shunning soft Pity's rising sway, 
Regardless of the tears and unavailing pray'rs ! 
Perhaps this hour, in Misery's squalid nest, 
She strains your infant to her joyless breast, 
And with a mother's fears shrinks at the rocking blast ! 25 

" O ye ! who, sunk in beds of down, 

Feel not a want but what yourselves create, 
Think, for a moment, on his wretched fate, 

Whom friends and fortune quite disown ! 

Ill-satisfy'd keen nature's clam'rous call, 3° 

Stretched on his straw, he lays himself to sleep ; 
While through the ragged roof and chinky wall, 



54 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Chill, o'er his slumbers piles the drifty heap ! 

Think on the dungeon's grim confine, 

Where Guilt and poor Misfortune pine ! 

Guilt, erring man, relenting view ! 
5 But shall thy legal rage pursue 

The wretch, already crushed low 

By cruel Fortune's undeserved blow ? 
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress ; 
A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss ! " 

io I heard nae mair, for chanticleer 
Shook off the pouthery 1 snaw, 
And hailed the morning with a cheer — 
A cottage-rousing craw. 

But deep this truth impress'd my mind — 
15 Through all His works abroad, 

The heart benevolent and kind 
The most resembles God. 2 

The difference between the Scottish and the English 
portions of the poem is striking. This is "the voice of 
20 Mercy herself," says Carlyle. 

It was on the 28th of November, 1786, that Burns 
reached Edinburgh and began his triumphal winter. The 
following summer he traveled in Scotland ; the Highlands 
set him to singing. One of these songs is 

THE BANKS OF THE DEVON. 

25 How pleasant the banks of the clear winding Devon, 

With green spreading bushes, and flowers blooming fair ! 

1 powdery. 2 Cf. " He prayeth best who loveth best " etc. 

— Ancient Mariner. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 55 

But the boniest flower on the banks of the Devon 
Was once a sweet bud on the braes 1 of the Ayr. 2 

Mild be the sun on this sweet blushing flower, 
In the gay rosy morn as it bathes in the dew ; 

And gentle the fall of the soft vernal shower, 5 

That steals on the evening each leaf to renew. 

spare the dear blossom, ye orient breezes, 
With chill hoary wing as ye usher the dawn ! 

And far be thou distant, thou reptile that seizes 

The verdure and pride of the garden and lawn ! 10 

Let Bourbon exult in his gay gilded lilies, 

And England, triumphant, display her proud rose ; 

A fairer than either adorns the green valleys, 
Where Devon, sweet Devon, meandering flows. 

In a letter to Miss Chalmers, Burns says: "The air 15 
is admirable : true old Highland. It was the tune of a 
Gaelic song which an Inverness lady sang me when I 
was there. ... I won't say the poetry is first-rate ; 
though I am convinced it is very well : and what is not 
always the case with compliments to ladies, it is not only 20 
si?icere but just." 

Another song which was a direct outcome of the High- 
land tour is 

M'PHERSON'S FAREWELL. 

Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong, 

The wretch's destinie ! 25 

M'Pherson's time will not be long 
On yonder gallows tree. 

1 slopes. '- " Miss Charlotte Hamilton . . . was born on the banks of the Ayr, 

but was, at the time I wrote these lines, residing at Harvieston, on the 
romantic banks of the little river Devon." — B. 



56 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Chorus. — Sae rantinly, sae wantonly, 
Sae dauntinly gaed he ; 
He play'd a spring 1 and danc'd it round, 
Below the gallows tree. 

5 O what is death but parting breath ? — 

On monie a bloody plain 
I 've dar'd his face, and in this place 
I scorn him yet again ! 

Untie these bands from off my hands 
10 And bring to me my sword, 

And there 's no man in all Scotland, 
But I '11 brave him at a word. 

I 've liv'd a life of sturt 2 and strife ; 
I die by treacherie : 
15 It burns my heart I must depart 

And not avenged be. 

Now farewell light, thou sunshine bright, 

And all beneath the sky ! 
May coward shame distain 3 his name, 
20 The wretch that dare not die ! 

James M'Pherson, a freebooter, who with his Gypsy 

followers terrified the Counties of Aberdeen, Moray, and 

Banff, was finally seized and condemned to be hanged. 

While in prison, it is said, he composed the wild air which 

25 prompted Burns to write this song. 

The next winter, which was spent in Edinburgh, the 
worshipers were fewer and some of them far less en- 
thusiastic. In the spring Burns leased a poor farm at 

1 piece of dance music. 2 trouble. 3 stain. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 57 

Ellisland, and was regularly married to Jean Armour. 
While she was visiting his mother and sisters at Mossgiel 
and learning how to do her part of the work on the new 
farm, he was preparing the home. Meantime this is his 
song to her : 5 

OF A' THE AIRTS THE WIND CAN BLAW. 

Of a' the airts 1 the wind can blaw 

I dearly like the west, 
For there the bonie lassie lives, 

The lassie I lo'e best : 
There's wild woods grow an' rivers row, 2 10 

An' mony a hill between ; 
But day and night my fancy's flight 

Is ever wi' my Jean. 

I see her in the dewy flow'rs, 

I see her sweet an' fair : 15 

I hear her in the tunefu' birds, 

I hear her charm the air : 
There 's not a bonie rlow'r that springs 

By fountain, shaw, 3 or green ; 
There 's not a bonie bird that sings, 20 

But minds me o' my Jean. 

And who, with or without an ear for music, does not 
like such singing ? 

Again winter had come, and it had brought Jean. As 
farmer and exciseman Burns struggled on. He sent Mrs. 25 
Dunlop 

1 directions. 2 roll. 3 wood. 



58 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

AULD LANG SYNE. 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 
And never brought to min' ? 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 
And auld lang syne ? 

5 Chorus. — For auld lang syne, my dear, 
For auld lang syne, 
We '11 tak a cup o' kindness yet 
For auld lang syne. 

And surely ye '11 be your pint-stowp, 1 
io And surely I '11 be mine ! 

And we '11 tak a cup o' kindness yet 
For auld lang syne. 



We twa hae run about the braes, 
And pu'd the gowans fine ; 2 
i ^ But we 've wander'd mony a weary fit 3 

Sin' auld lang syne. 

We twa hae paidl't 4 i' the burn, 5 

From mornin' sun till dine ; 6 
But seas between us braid 7 hae roar'd 
20 Sin' auld lang syne. 

And there 's a hand, my trusty fier, 8 

And gie 's a hand o' thine ; 
And we '11 tak a right guid-willie waught 9 

For auld lang syne. 

25 It is the favorite song at reunions among the Scots. 
Although there are several versions of it, Burns's work 
is conspicuous in his third and fourth stanzas. 

1 drinking vessel. 2 pulled daisies. 3 foot. 4 paddled. 5 brook. 

6 dinner-time. " broad. 8 comrade. 9 friendly draught. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 59 

In this connection it ought to be said that we are in- 
debted to him for improving many an old song. One to 
which his re-working gave purity, life, and beauty is 

JOHN ANDERSON MY JO. 

John Anderson my jo, 1 John, 

When we were first acquent, 5 

Your locks were like the raven, 

Your bonie ' 2 brow was brent ; 
But now your brow is beld, 3 John, 

Your locks are like the snaw ; 
But blessings on your frosty pow, 4 10 

John Anderson my jo. 

John Anderson my jo, John, 

We clamb the hill thegither ; 
And monie a canty 5 day, John, 

We 've had wi' ane anither : 15 

Now we maun totter down, John, 

And hand in hand we'll go, 
And sleep thegither at the foot, 

John Anderson my jo. 

The story of two long lives is told so briefly that a 20 
hasty glance is not likely to reveal the perfection of the 
little gem. As with the man John Anderson, acquaint- 
ance increases the liking. 

In the illustration which accompanied the song in 
Thomson's work "the old couple are seated by the fire- 25 
side, the gude-wife in great good humor is clapping John's 
shoulder, while he smiles and looks at her with such glee 
as to show that he fully recollects the pleasant days when 

i sweetheart. 2 high and straight, 3 bald. 4 head, 5 happy. 



60 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

they were ' first acquent. ' ' [Letter of Thomson to Burns, 
1793.] On the other hand, Mr. Wallace says: "The 
pathos of life's evening will never find a happier or 
fuller expression." To me the poem does not suggest 
5 "great good humor," nor is the keynote pathos. Some 
of the lines may not be free from pathos, but the touch 
only heightens the happiness. It is thoughtful, serene, 
supreme happiness. 

The air of the next song was Masterton's, Burns 

10 says ; the song, his. "The occasion of it," he adds, "was 
this : Mr. William Nicol, of the High School, Edinburgh, 
during the autumn vacation being at Moffat, honest Allan 
[Masterton] and I went to pay Nicol a visit. We had 
such a joyous meeting that Mr. Masterton and I agreed, 

15 each in our own way, that we should celebrate the 
business." 



WILLIE BREWED A PECK O' MAUT. 

O, Willie brew'd a peck o' maut, 1 

An' Rob an' Allan cam to see : 
Three blyther hearts that lee-lang night 
20 Ye wad na found in Christendie. 

Chorus. — We are na fou, we're nae that fou, 2 
But just a drappie 3 in our ee ; 4 
The cock may craw, the day may daw, 5 
And aye we '11 taste the barley bree. 6 

25 Here are we met, three merry boys, 

Three merry boys, I trow, are we ; 
An' mony a night we 've merry been, 
An mony mae 7 we hope to be ! 

1 malt. 2 full. 3 drop. 4 eye. 5 dawn. 6 liquor. 7 more. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 61 

It is the moon, I ken her horn, 

That 's blinkin 1 in the lift 2 sae hie ; 3 

She shines sae bright to wile us hame, 
But, by my sooth, she '11 wait a wee ! 

Wha first shall rise to gang awa', 5 

A cuckold, coward loon 4 is he ! 
Wha first beside his chair shall fa', 

He is the king amang us three ! 

The following stanzas were written to Mary Campbell, 
whose lover he had become three years before. 5 The 10 
third anniversary of her death saddened him. He spent 
most of the cold night wandering on the banks of the Nith 
and about his farmyard. Lockhart, in reporting a state- 
ment made by Jean Burns to a friend, says his wife finally 
found him "stretched on a mass of straw with his eyes 15 
fixed on a beautiful planet 'that shone like another moon' 
and prevailed on him to come in. He immediately . . . 
wrote . . . with all the ease of one copying from mem- 
ory, these sublime and pathetic verses": 

TO MARY IN HEAVEN. 

Thou ling'ring star, with less'ning ray, 20 

That lov'st to greet the early morn, 
Again thou usher'st in the day 

My Mary from my soul was torn. 
O Mary ! dear departed shade ! 

Where is thy place of blissful rest? 25 

See'st thou thy lover lowly laid ? 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? 

1 gleaming. 2 sky. 3 high. 4 fellow. 5 See introduction to 
A Bard's Epitaph. 



62 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

That sacred hour can I forget, 

Can I forget the hallowed grove, 
Where by the winding Ayr we met 

To live one day of parting love ? 
5 Eternity will not efface 

Those records dear of transports past, 
Thy image at our last embrace — 

Ah ! little thought we 't was our last ! 

Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbl'd shore, 
10 O'erhung with wild woods, thick'ning green ; 

The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar 

Twin'd amorous round the raptur'd scene : 
The flow'rs sprang wanton to be prest, 
The birds sang love on every spray, 
15 Till too, too soon the glowing west 

Proclaim'd the speed of winged day. 

Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes, 
And fondly broods with miser care ! 

Time but th' impression stronger makes, 
20 As streams their channels deeper wear. 

My Mary, dear departed shade ! 
Where is thy place of blissful rest ? 

See'st thou thy lover lowly laid ? 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? 



b J 



25 While Captain Grose, the antiquary, was preparing his 
Antiquities of Scotla?id, Burns asked him to include Allo- 
way Kirk, the burial-place of the poet's father, and the 
scene of many good witch stories. The captain agreed 
to make the drawing, provided Burns would furnish an 

30 accompanying legend. The result was that Burns wrote 
three prose stories and turned one of them into 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 63 

TAM O' SHANTER. 

A TALE. 
Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke. — Gawin Douglas. 

When chapman billies leave the street, 1 
And drouthy 2 neibors neibors meet, 
As market-days are wearing late, 
And folk begin to tak the gate ; 3 
While we sit bousin 4 at the nappy, 5 5 

And gettin fou 6 and unco happy, 
We think na on the lang Scots miles, 
The mosses, waters, slaps, 7 and stiles, 
That lie between us and our hame, 
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame, 10 

Gathering her brows like gathering storm, 
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. 

This truth fand 8 honest Tarn o' Shanter, 
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter : 
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses, 15 

For honest men and bonie lasses.) 

O Tarn ! had'st thou but been sae wise 
As taen thy ain wife Kate's advice! 
She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum, 
A bletherin, blusterin, drunken blellum ; 20 

That frae November till October, 
Ae market-day 9 thou was na sober ; 
That ilka 10 melder n wi' the miller, 
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller ; 

1 When packman fellows, the sellers at the booths and stalls, leave the mar- 
ket. 2 thirsty. 3 road. 4 drinking deeply. 5 ale. 6 full. 7 bogs. 
8 found. 9 the weekly market. 10 every. U the quantity of grain 
sent to the mill to be ground at one time. 



64 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

That ev'ry naig ] was ca'd a shoe on, 2 
The smith and thee gat roarin fou on; 
That at the Lord's house, ev'n on Sunday, 
Thou drank wi' Kirkton 3 Jean till Monday. 
5 She prophesied, that, late or soon, 

Thou would be found deep drown'd in Doon ; 
Or catch't wi' warlocks 4 in the mirk, 5 
By Alloway's auld haunted kirk. 

Ah, gentle dames ! it gars 6 me greet, 7 
10 To think how mony counsels sweet, 

How mony lengthened sage advices, 
The husband frae the wife despises ! 

But to our tale : — Ae market night, 
Tarn had got planted unco right, 

15 Fast by an ingle 8 bleezin 9 finely, 

Wi' reamin swats 10 that drank divinely ; 
And at his elbow, Souter ll Johnie, 
His ancient, trusty, drouthy 12 crony : 
Tarn lo'ed him like a vera brither ; 

20 They had been fou for weeks thegither. 

The night drave on wi' sangs and clatter ; 
And ay the ale was growing better : 
The landlady and Tarn grew gracious 
Wi' secret favours, sweet, and precious: 

25 The souter tauld his queerest stories ; 

The landlord's laugh was ready chorus : 
The storm without might rair 13 and rustle, 
Tarn did na mind the storm a whistle. 

1 nag. 2 shod. 3 a common name for any country town that has a 

parish church. Here, perhaps, it means Kirkoswald, which claims the 
originals of all the characters in the poem. 4 wizards. 5 darkness. 
6 makes. 7 weep. 8 fire. 9 blazing. 10 foaming ale. n cobbler. 
12 thirsty. 13 roar. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 65 

Care, mad to see a man sae happy, 
E'en drown 'd himsel amang the nappy : 
As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure, 
The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure; 
Kings may be blest, but Tarn was glorious, 5 

O'er a' the ills o' life victorious ! 

But pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed ; 
Or like the snow falls in the river, 
A moment white — then melts for ever ; 10 

Or like the borealis race, 
That flit e'er you can point their place ; 
Or like the rainbow's lovely form 
Evanishing amid the storm. 

Nae man can tether time or tide : 15 

The hour approaches Tarn maun ride, — 
That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane, 
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in ; 
And sic a night he taks the road in, 
As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in. 20 

The wind blew as 't wad blawn its last ; 
The rattling show'rs rose on the blast ; 
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd ; 
Loud, deep, and lang the thunder bellow'd : 
That night, a child might understand, 25 

The Deil had business on his hand. 1 

Weel mounted on his gray mear, 2 Meg, 
A better never lifted leg, 

1 Carlyle says that the " chasm between the Ayr public-house and the gate 
of Tophet " — between the natural and the supernatural — " is nowhere 
bridged over." It has been suggested that line 8, page 64, is the first 
link and that these two are the second. 2 mare. 



66 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Tarn skelpit x on thro' dub 2 and mire, 
Despising wind and rain and fire ; 
Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet, 
Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet, 
5 Whiles glowrin round wi' prudent cares, # 

Lest bogles catch him unawares. 
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, 
Whare ghaists and houlets 3 nightly cry. 

By this time he was cross the ford, 
10 Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor'd ; 4 

And past the birks 5 and meikle 6 stane, 

Whare drucken Charlie brak 's neck-bane ; 

And thro' the whins, 7 and by the cairn, 8 

Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn ; 
15 And near the thorn, aboon the well, 

Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel. 

Before him Doon pours all his floods ; 

The doubling storm roars thro' the woods ; 

The lightnings flash from pole to pole, 
20 Near and more near the thunders roll ; 

When, glimmering thro' the groaning trees, 

Kirk-Alloway 9 seemed in a bleeze; 

Thro' ilka bore 10 the beams were glancing, 

And loud resounded mirth and dancing. 

25 Inspiring bold John Barleycorn ! 

What dangers thou can'st make us scorn ! 
Wi' tippenny n we fear nae evil ; 
Wi' usquebae 12 we '11 face the devil ! 

1 rattled. 2 puddle. 3 owls. 4 smothered. 5 birches. 6 big. 7 gorse. 
8 pile of stones. 9 Burns was born within a few yards of this church. 
Though deserted in his time, it was prominent in many of the stories of 
devils, ghosts, and witches told Burns by the superstitious old woman 
who lived in the family. Now it is a roofless ruin. 10 crevice. 

11 twopenny ale. 12 whiskey. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 67 

The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddle, 

Fair play, he car'd na deils a boddle. 

But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd, 

Till, by the heel and hand admonish'd, 

She ventur'd forward on the light ; 5 

And, wow ! Tarn saw an unco sight ! 

Warlocks x and witches in a dance ; 
Nae cotillon brent new 2 frae France, 
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels 
Put life and mettle in their heels : 10 

A winnock 3 bunker 4 in the east, 
There sat Auld Nick in shape o' beast ; 
A towzie tyke, 5 black, grim, and large, 
To gie them music was his charge ; 
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl, 7 15 

Till roof and rafters a' did did. 8 — 
Coffins stood round like open presses, 
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses ; 
And by some devilish cantraip sleight 9 
Each in its cauld hand held a light, 20 

By which heroic Tarn was able 
To note upon the haly table 10 
A murderer's banes in gibbet aims; 11 
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns ; 
A thief, new-cutted frae the rape — 25 

Wi' his last gasp his gab 12 did gape ; 
Five tomahawks, wi' blude red-rusted ; 
Five scymitars, wi' murder crusted ; 
A garter, which a babe had strangled ; 
A knife, a father's throat had mangled, 3° 

1 wizards. 2 brand-new. 3 window. * recess. 5 shaggy dog. 6 bagpipes. 
7 scream. 8 ring. 9 weird trick. 10 communion table. n irons. 
12 mouth. 



68 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Whom his ain son o' life bereft — 
The gray hairs yet stack 1 to the heft ; 2 
Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu', 3 
Which ev'n to name wad be unlawfu'. 

5 As Tammie glowr'd, amaz'd and curious, 

The mirth and fun grew fast and furious : 
The piper loud and louder blew, 
The dancers quick and quicker flew ; 
They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit, 4 

io Till ilka carlin 5 swat and reekit 6 

And coost 7 her duddies 8 to the wark 
And linket at it 9 in her sark ! 10 

Now Tarn, O Tarn ! had thae n been queans, 12 
A' plump and strapping in their teens ! 

15 Their sarks, instead o' creeshie fiannen, 13 

Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen ! 14 — 
Thir 15 breeks o' mine, my only pair, 
That ance were plush, o' gude blue hair, 
I wad hae gien them aff my hurdies, 16 

20 For ae blink o' the bonie burdies ! 17 

But wither'd beldams, auld and droll, 
Rigwoodie 18 hags wad spean 19 a foal, 
Lowping 20 and flinging on a crummock, 21 
I wonder didna turn thy stomach. 

25 But Tarn ken'd what was what fu' brawlie; 22 

There was ae winsome wench and walie, 23 

1 stuck. 2 handle. 3 Cf. Macbeth, IV, 1. 4 joined hands. 5 witch. 
6 steamed. " threw off. 8 clothes. 9 set to it. 10 shift. 11 those. 
I 2 young women. 13 greasy flannel. 14 very fine linen, woven in a 
reed of seventeen hundred divisions. 15 these. 16 hips. 17 damsels. 
18 wizened. 1 9 wean. 20 leaping. 21 staff with a crooked head. 
22 very well. 23 powerful. 



2 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 69 

That night enlisted in the core l 

(Lang after ken'd on Carrick shore : 

For mony a beast to dead she shot, 

And perish'd mony a bonie boat, 

And shook baith meikle corn and bear, 5 

And kept the country-side in fear) ; 

Her cutty sark o' Paisley harn, 3 

That while a lassie she had worn, 

In longitude tho' sorely scanty, 

It was her best, and she was vauntie. 4 10 

Ah ! little kent thy reverend grannie, 

That sark she coft 5 for her wee Nannie, 

Wi' twa pund Scots ('t was a' her riches), 

Wad ever graced a dance o' witches ! 

But here my Muse her wing maun cow'r, c 15 

Sic nights are far beyond her pow'r ; 
To sing how Nannie lap and flang, 7 
(A souple jad 8 she was and Strang,) 
And how Tarn stood like ane bewitch'd, 
And thought his very een enrich'd ; 20 

Even Satan glowr'd 9 and fidg'd fu' fain, 
And hotch'd 10 and blew wi' might and main : 
Till first ae caper, syne u anither, 
Tarn tint 12 his reason a' thegither, 
And roars out, " Weel done, Cutty-sark ! " 25 

And in an instant all was dark : 
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied, 
When out the hellish legion sallied. 

As bees bizz out wi' angry fyke, 13 
When plundering herds assail their byke ; 14 30 

1 company. 2 barley. 3 short shift of coarse linen. 4 proud of it. 5 bought. 
6 fold. "> leaped and kicked. 8 lass. 9 gazed. 10 moved uneasily. 
11 then. 12 i os t. 13 f uss . 14 nest. 



3 



70 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

As open pussie's x mortal foes, 
When, pop ! she starts before their nose ; 
As eager runs the market-crowd, 
When " Catch the thief ! " resounds aloud ; 
c So Maggie runs, the witches follow, 

Wi' mony an eldritch 2 skriech and hollo. 

Ah, Tarn ! ah, Tarn ! thou '11 get thy f airin ! 
In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin ! 
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin ! 

io Kate soon will be a woefu' woman ! 

Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, 
And win the key-stane 4 of the brig : 
There at them thou thy tail may toss, 
A running stream they dare na cross. 

15 But ere the key-stane she could make, 

The fient a tail she had to shake ! 
For Nannie, far before the rest, 
Hard upon noble Maggie prest, 
And flew at Tarn wi' furious ettle ; 5 

20 But little wist she Maggie's mettle — 

Ae spring brought aff her master hale, 
But left behind her ain gray tail : 
The carlin 6 claught 7 her by the rump, 
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump. 

25 Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read, 

Ilk man and mother's son, take heed, 



1 the hare's. 2 unearthly. 3 reward. 4 It is a well known fact that witches, 
or any evil spirits, have no power to follow a poor wight any farther 
than the middle of the next running stream. It may be proper like- 
wise to mention to the benighted traveller, that when he falls in with 
bogles, whatever danger may be in his going forward, there is much 
more hazard in turning back. — B. 5 a im. 6 witch. 7 clutched. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 71 

Whene'er to drink you are inclin'd, 
Or cutty-sarks run in your mind, 
Think, ye may buy the joys owre dear, 
Remember Tarn o' Shanter's mear. 1 

" Tarn <?' Shanter" says Burns, " is my first essay in 5 
the way of telling a tale." It is his only tale and in the 
opinion of Scott, Lockhart, Burns himself, and perhaps 
a majority of Scots, his masterpiece. It is said to have 
been written in one day. Carlyle says it is " the best 
day's work done in Scotland since Bannockburn." 10 

A lyric that needs no comment is 



BONIE DOON. 

Ye flowery banks o' bonie Doon, 
, How can ye blume sae fair? 
' How can ye chant, ye little birds, 

And I sae fu' o' care ? 15 

Thou '11 break my heart, thou bonie bird, 

That sings upon the bough ; 
Thou minds me o' the happy days, 

When my fause luve was true. 

Thou '11 break my heart, thou bonie bird, 20 

That sings beside thy mate; 
For sae I sat, and sae I sang, 

And wist na o' my fate. 

1 It is interesting to compare the ending of the prose version : " However, the 
unsightly, tail-less condition of the vigorous steed was to the last hour 
of the noble creature's life an awful warning to all Carrick farmers not 
to stay too late in Ayr markets." 



72 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Aft hae I rov'd by bonie Doon 

To see the wood-bine twine, 
And ilka x bird sang o' its luve, 

And sae did I o' mine. 

5 Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose 

Frae aff its thorny tree; 
And my fause luver staw 2 my rose 
But left the thorn wi' me. 

The result is so good that one may be surprised to learn 
10 from Mr. Scott Douglas that the poet's aim in composing 
" this most popular of his songs " was merely to fit a par- 
ticular tune with suitable words. 

Again, we do not know the heroine of 



FLOW GENTLY, SWEET AFTON. 

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, 3 
15 Flow gently, I '11 sing thee a song in thy praise ; 
My Mary 's asleep by thy murmuring stream, 
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. 

Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen, 
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, 
20 Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear, 
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair. 

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills, 
Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills ; 
There daily I wander as noon rises high, 
25 My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye. 

1 every. 2 stole. 3 slopes. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 73 

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below, 
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow ; 
There oft, as mild Evening weeps over the lea, 
The sweet-scented birk 1 shades my Mary and me. 

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, 5 

And winds by the cot where my Mary resides ; 

How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave, 

As gathering sweet flow'rets she stems thy clear wave. 

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, 
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays; 10 

My Mary 's asleep by thy murmuring stream, 
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. 



It is not difficult to understand Mr. Douglas's note : 
" A kind of holy calm pervades the soul of the reader 
who peruses, or the auditor who listens to the music of 15 
this unique strain. The 'pastoral melancholy' which 
Wordsworth felt at St. Mary's Loch steals over his heart 
and laps him in a dreamy elysium of sympathetic repose." 

In 1787-8, before Burns's regular marriage with Jean 
Armour, he had become acquainted with Mrs. Maclehose. 20 
They found each other most fascinating. Their lively 
correspondence came to an abrupt end, however, when 
Burns told her of his coming marriage. In 1791 they 
met again in time for Burns to bid her farewell before she 
sailed to the West Indies. Soon afterward he sent her 25 
the poem 



1 birch. 



74 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

AE FOND KISS. 

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever ; 
Ae fareweel, and then for ever ! 
Deep in heart-wrung tears I '11 pledge thee, 
Warring sighs and groans, I '11 wage thee. 
5 Who shall say that Fortune grieves him, 

While the star of hope she leaves him ? 
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me ; 
Dark despair around benights me. 

I '11 ne'er blame nqy partial fancy, 
io Naething could resist my Nancy ; 

But to see her was to love her ; 

Love but her, and love for ever. 

Had we never lov'd sae kindly, 

Had we never lov'd sae blindly, 
15 Never met — or never parted — 

We had ne'er been broken-hearted. 

Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest ! 
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest ! 
Thine be ilka joy and treasure, 
20 Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure ! 

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever ; 
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever ! 
Deep in heart-wrung tears I '11 pledge thee, 
Warring sighs and groans I '11 wage x thee ! 

25 Scott has remarked that the four lines beginning with 
" Had we never lov'd sae kindly " are worth a thousand 
romances ; and Mrs. Jameson has said that not only are 
they worth a thousand romances — they are " in them- 

1 pledge. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 75 

selves a complete romance. They are the alpha and 
omega of feeling, and contain the essence of an existence 
of pain and pleasure distilled into one burning drop." 

In August, 1792, Mr. Baillie and his two daughters, 
neighbors of Mrs. Dunlop, while on their way to England 5 
called on Burns. The meeting with Miss Leslie Baillie 
filled the poet's soul with " delighting " and " pure " emo- 
tions, as he wrote Mrs. Dunlop. He accompanied his 
guests some fifteen miles, and as he rode home he thought 
of the old ballad beginning 10 

" O bonie Lizzie Baillie, 
I '11 rowe thee in my plaidie," 
and composed 

BONIE LESLEY. 

O saw ye bonie Lesley 

As she gaed o'er the border? 15 

She 's gane, like Alexander, 

To spread her conquests farther. 

To see her is to love her, 

And love but her for ever ; 
For Nature made her what she is, 20 

And never made anither ! 

Thou art a queen, fair Lesley, 

Thy subjects, we before thee : 
Thou art divine, fair Lesley, 

The hearts o' men adore thee. 25 

The Deil he could na scaith * thee, 
Or aught that wad belang thee ; 

1 harm. 



76 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

He 'd look into thy bonie face, 
And say, " I canna wrang thee." 

The powers aboon will tent thee ; 
Misfortune sha' na steer 1 thee ; 
c Thou 'rt like themselves sae lovely, 

That ill they '11 ne'er let near thee. 

Return again, fair Lesley, 

Return to Caledonie ! 
That we may brag, we hae a lass 
IO There 's nane again sae bonie. 

Three years before he had written To Mary in Heaven. 
It is the same Mary that he remembers so tenderly in 

HIGHLAND MARY. 

Ye banks, and braes, and streams around 
The castle o' Montgomery, 
l5 Green be your woods and fair your flowers, 

Your waters never drumlie ! 2 
There simmer 3 first unfauld her robes, 

And there the langest tarry ; 
For there I took the last fareweel 
20 O' my sweet Highland Mary. 

How sweetly bloom'd the gay green birk, 
How rich the hawthorn's blossom, 

As underneath their fragrant shade 
I clasp'd her to my bosom ! 
25 The golden hours, on angel wings, 

Flew o'er me and my dearie ; 

1 molest. 2 muddy. 3 summer. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 77 

For dear to me as light and life, 
Was my sweet Highland Mary. 

Wi' monie a vow and lock'd embrace 

Our parting was fu' tender ; 
And, pledging aft to meet again, 5 

We tore oursels asunder ; 
But O ! fell death's untimely frost, 

That nipt my flower sae early ! 
Now green 's the sod, and cauld 's the clay, 

That wraps my Highland Mary ! 10 

O pale, pale now, those rosy lips, 

I aft hae kiss'd sae fondly ! 
And closed for aye the sparkling glance, 

That dwelt on me sae kindly ! 
And mould'ring now in silent dust, 15 

That heart that lo'ed me dearly ! 
But still within my bosom's core 

Shall live my Highland Mary. 

In the fall of this year, 1792, he began to send contri- 
butions to Melodies of Scotland. He writes the editor, 20 
Thomson : " I have hitherto deferred the sublimer, more 
pathetic airs, until more leisure, as they will take and 
deserve a greater effort." And a week later he writes of 
Highland Mary : " I think it in my happiest manner : you 
will see at first glance that it suits the air," — Katherine 25 
Ogie, one of the oldest and most plaintive of Scottish 
melodies. 

These verses illustrate Milton's declaration that rhyme 
is " no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or 
good verse." 3° 

Another contribution to Thomson's collection was 



78 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 



DUNCAN GRAY. 

Duncan Gray came here to woo, 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 
On blythe Yule night when we were fou, 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 
5 Maggie coost her head fu hiegh, 

Look'd asklent 1 and unco skiegh, 2 
Gart 3 poor Duncan stand abiegh; 4 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 

Duncan fleech'd, 5 and Duncan pray'd ; 
10 Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 

Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig, 6 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 
Duncan sigh'd baith out and in, 
Grat 7 his een 8 baith bleer't 9 and blin', 
15 Spak o' lowpin owre a linn ; 10 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 

Time and chance are but a tide, 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 
Slighted love is sair to bide, 
20 Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 

"Shall I, like a fool," quoth he, 
" For a haughty hizzie n die ? 
She may gae to — France for me ! " 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 

1 askance. 2 very high-spirited. 3 made. 4 aloof. 5 flattered. 6 a rocky 
islet in the Firth of Clyde, near the Ayrshire coast. 7 wept. 8 eyes. 
9 bleared. 10 I.e., using drowning as a means of suicide. A linn is a 
waterfall. " A line . . . that should make you immortal," wrote Hon. 
Andrew Erskine to the poet. n lass. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 79 

How it comes let doctors tell, 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 
Meg grew sick as he grew hale, 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 
Something in her bosom wrings, 5 

For relief a sigh she brings ; 
And O ! her een, they spak sic things! 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 

Duncan was a lad o' grace, 

Ha, ha, the wooin o't! 10 

Maggie's was a piteous case, 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 
Duncan could na be her death, 
Swelling pity smoor'd 1 his wrath ; 
Now they're crouse and cantie 2 baith; 15 

Ha, ha, the wooin o 't ! 

In sending this song to the editor, Burns writes : " 'Dun- 
can Gray' is that kind of light-horse gallop of an air which 
precludes sentiment. The ludicrous is its ruling feature." 
Mr. Douglas says : " Few of Burns's songs acquired a 20 
more rapid popularity than this; it is so thoroughly 
pointed and natural throughout." 

In 1 79 1 Burns had given up his farm and bought a 
house in Dumfries, where he lived as exciseman. At 
this time his democratic sympathies were touched by the 25 
French Revolution. In 1793 some recent success of the 
"patriots," together with the recollection of Scotland's 
struggle for freedom in 13 14, when Bruce on the field of 
Bannockburn gained the victory over Edward II which 
decided the independence of Scotland, roused Burns to 30 
write 

1 smothered. 2 lively and happy. 



80 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 



SCOTS WHA HAE. 

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, 
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led ; 
Welcome to your gory bed, 

Or to victory ! 
5 Now 's the day, and now 's the hour; 

See the front o' battle lour ; 
See approach proud Edward's power — 

Chains and slavery ! 

Wha will be a traitor knave ? 
io Wha can fill a coward's grave ? 

Wha sae base as be a slave ? 

Let him turn and flee ! 
Wha for Scotland's king and law 
Freedom's sword will strongly draw, 
15 Freeman stand, or Freeman fa', 

Let him follow me ! 

By oppression's woes and pains ! 
By your sons in servile chains ! 
We will drain our dearest veins, 
20 But they shall be free ! 

Lay the proud usurpers low ! 
Tyrants fall in every foe ! 
Liberty 's in every blow ! — 
Let us do, or die ! 

25 In sending Thomson this " Scot's Ode," which one 
might suppose to be Bruce's " address to his heroic fol- 
lowers on that eventful morning," Burns added : " So 
may God ever defend the cause of Truth and Liberty, as 
He did that day ! " 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. SI 

" Independently of my enthusiasm as a Scotsman," he 
wrote Lord Buchan, in 1794, "I have rarely met with 
anything in history which interests my feelings as a man, 
equal with the story of Bannockburn. On the one hand, 
a cruel, but able usurper, leading on the finest army in 5 
Europe, to extinguish the last spark of freedom among a 
greatly-daring and greatly-injured people; on the other 
hand, the desperate relics of a gallant nation devoting 
themselves to rescue their bleeding country or perish 
with her. Liberty ! thou art a prize truly and indeed in- 10 
valuable, for never canst thou be too dearly bought !" 

As an improvement upon a street ditty Burns wrote 

A RED, RED ROSE. 

My Luve is like a red, red rose, 

That 's newly sprung in June : 
My Luve is like the melodie, 15 

That 's sweetly play'd in tune. 

As fair art thou, my bonie lass, 

So deep in luve am I : 
And I will luve thee still, my Dear, 

Till a' the seas gang dry. 20 

Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear, 
And the rocks melt wi' the sun ; 

And I will luve thee still, my Dear, 
While the sands o' life shall run. 

And fare-thee-well, my only Luve ! 25 

And fare-thee-well awhile ! 
And I will come again, my Luve, 

Tho' 't were ten thousand mile ! 



82 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

It is worth while to remember Hazlitt's comment on 
this simple lyric, quoted above in connection with Mary 
Moris on. 

In 1795, when it was safer for a reformer to speak out 
5 than it had been since 1792, Burns wrote Thomson : " A 
great critic, Aikin, on songs says that Love and Wine 
are the exclusive themes for song-writing. The following 
is on neither subject and consequently is no Song; but 
will be allowed, I think, to be two or three pretty good 
10 prose thoughts inverted into rhyme " : 

A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT. 

Is there, for honest poverty, 

That hings his head, an' a' that ? 
The coward slave, we pass him by, 
We dare be poor for a' that ! 
15 For a' that, an' a' that, 

Our toils obscure, an' a' that ; 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp ; 
The man 's the gowd x for a' that. 

What tho' on hamely fare we dine, 
20 Wear hodden-gray, 2 an' a' that ; 

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, 
A man's a man for a' that. 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

Their tinsel show, an' a' that; 
25 The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, 

Is king o' men for a' that. 

Ye see yon birkie, 3 ca'd a lord, 

Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that ; 

1 gold. 2 coarse woolen cloth. 3 fellow. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 83 

Tho' hundreds worship at his word, 
He 's but a coof l for a' that : 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

His riband, star, an' a' that, 
The man o' independent mind, 5 

He looks and laughs at a' that. 

A prince can mak a belted knight, 

A marquis, duke, an' a' that; 
But an honest man 's aboon his might, 

Guid faith he mauna fa' a that ! 10 

For a' that, an' a' that, 

Their dignities, an' a' that, 
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth, 
Are higher rank than a' that. 

Then let us pray that come it may, 15 

As come it will for a' that, 
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, 
May bear the gree, 3 an' a' that. 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

It 's coming yet, for a' that, 20 

That man to man, the warld o'er, 
Shall brothers be for a' that. 

" I do not give you the foregoing song for your book, 
. . . for the piece is not really poetry." 

Mr. Logie Robertson says : "If it be not poetry — and 25 
Matthew Arnold of all critics alone agrees with the 
author — it is something better." Whatever we call the 
lyric, many a British heart responded to the sentiments, 
and the spirit of it is worth considering in connection 
with the American Revolution as well as with that of the 30 

1 fool. 2 must not claim. 3 prize. 



84 POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. 

French. "It is so characteristic of Burns," says Doug- 
las, " that of all the poems and songs he ever wrote, it 
could be least spared from a collection of his works." 
What other song so effectively sings Liberty, Equality, 

5 Fraternity ? It is good sense, good politics, good 
religion. 

The next year was the poet's last. During his fatal 
illness he was attended by a kind-hearted friend of Mrs. 
Burns. One morning he suggested to this young woman 

io that if she would like new verses to any favorite tune, he 
would do his best to produce some. She at once played 
a melody she liked until Burns became familiar with it, 
and a few minutes later he handed her these verses : 

O, WERT THOU IN THE CAULD BLAST. 

O, wert thou in the cauld blast, 
15 On yonder lea, on yonder lea, 

My plaidie to the angry airt, 1 

I 'd shelter thee, I 'd shelter thee. 
Or did misfortune's bitter storms 
Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, 
20 Thy beild 2 should be my bosom, 

To share it a', to share it a'. 

Or were I in the wildest waste, 

Sae black and bare, sae black and bare, 

The desert were a paradise, 
25 If thou wert there, if thou wert there. 

Or were I monarch o' the globe, 
Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, 

The brightest jewel in my crown 

Wad be my queen, wad be my queen. 

1 quarter. 2 shelter. 



REPRESENTATIVE POEMS. 85 

In this simple song the youthfulness of Mary Morison 
has developed into an expression of love that is mature 
and thoroughly refined. Much of the best poetry is 
incomplete until it is read aloud, but perhaps Mendels- 
sohn has done more toward perfecting these two stanzas 5 
than the human voice can do, his melody harmonizes so 
exquisitely with the beautiful thought. It is with rever- 
ence that we listen as through the weird Scots atmos- 
phere both the musician and the poet bring us the ap- 
pealing message of one whose sympathy was enriched by 10 
suffering. 



PRONUNCIATION. 



[Mr. E. Charlton Black, of Cambridge, not only gave me valuable suggestions on 
this subject, but was thoughtful enough to read the manuscript to Dr. John 
Watson (Ian Maclaren).] 

After reminding us that the Scottish language is not a 
different language from English, but merely the northern 
dialect of English, Mr. John Stuart Blackie says: "The 
Scotch form of English bears on its face the distinct evidence 
of a dialect formed under the influence of music and popu- 
lar minstrelsy. It is, philologically considered, the musical 
and lyrical variety of the general English speech, and as 
such has a claim to be recognized in the higher education 
of all who speak the common English tongue." Instead of 
giving it this recognition, however, we are likely to say with 
Robert Louis Stevenson that before long Burns's Ayrshire 
and Scott's "brave metropolitan utterance" will be "the 
ghosts of speech." Meantime let us not be timid about 
pronouncing this dying Scots-English. Inasmuch as every 
county has its peculiarities, hard and fast rules are out of 
place. 

A has nearly the same variety of sounds that we have in 
the English ale, care, arm, ask, and all ; a' is equivalent to 
a in all. A I, as in mair, is one way of indicating the sound 
of a in care. E is both short and long, much as in English, 
/generally has the sound of i in bird (sometimes it is like 
i in pin, or u in cup, occasionally like * \wfine) ; Fhas nearly 

37 



88 PRONUNCIA TION. 

the same values. O has only one sound, as in more ; 
whether long, as in morn, or short, as in bonie, the quality 
is practically the same. U, when not like u in run, or oo as 
in moon, is as much like the French u or German u as it is 
like any one sound. 67" and OO, as in guid and aboon, are 
but slight modifications of this sound. O dislike the Eng- 
lish oo. H, when not silent, is strongly aspirate ; r rolls — 
sometimes into two syllables ; ng is simple, as in lang-er 
(not like the English anger) ; and ch and gh are strongly 
aspirated as gutturals, like the German ch after a, o, u, and 
an. E.g., brought is pronounced brocht. Final ed has the 
sound et or it and is sometimes so spelled. -Ing is pro- 
nounced like its ancient form -a?id, in which the d is silent. 



INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES. 



PAGE 

Address to the Unco 

Guid, or the Rigidly 

Righteous 40 

Ae Fond Kiss 74 

Ae fond kiss, and then we 

sever 74 

A guid New-Year I wish thee, 

Maggie 25 

A Man 's a Man for a' 

That 82 

A Red, Red Rose .... 81 
As Mailie an' her lambs the- 

gither 5 

Auld Lang Syne .... 58 
Banks of the Devon, The 54 
Bard's Epitaph, A ... 47 

Bonie Doon 71 

Bonie Lesley 75 

Cotter's Saturday Night, 

The 18 

Duncan Gray 78 

Duncan Gray came here to 

woo 78 

Farewell, ye dungeons dark 

and strong 55 

Flow Gently, Sweet 

Afton 72 

Flow gently, sweet Afton, 

among thy green braes . . 72 
Green Grow the Rashes . 9 



PAGE 

Green grow the rashes, O . 9 
Ha ! whaur ye gaun, ye crow- 

lin' ferlie 43 

Highland Mary 76 

How pleasant the banks of 

the clear winding Devon . 54 

Is there a whim-inspired fool 47 

Is there, for honest poverty . 82 

John Anderson my Jo . . 59 

John Anderson my jo, John 59 
Lament in rhyme, lament in 

prose 7 

Lines on an Interview 

with Lord Daer ... 49 

Louse, To a 43 

Mailie, Poor, Death and 

Dying Words of . . . 5 
Mailie's, Poor, Elegy . . 7 
Man was Made to Mourn . 10 
Mare Maggie, Auld, The 
Auld Farmer's New- 
Year Morning Saluta- 
tion to his 25 

Mary in Heaven, To . . 61 

Mary Morison 2 

Mountain Daisy, To a . . 45 

Mouse, To a 15 

M'Pherson's Farewell . 55 
My lov'd, my honour'd, much 

respected friend . . . . 18 



89 



9 o INDEX OF TITLES 

PAGE 

My Luve is like a red, red 

rose 8 1 

Of a' the airts the wind can 

blaw 57 

Oh thou unknown Almighty 

Cause 3 

O Mary, at thy window be . 2 
O saw ye bonie Lesley • • • 75 
O, Wert thou in the 

Cauld Blast 84 

O, Willie brew'd a peck 

o' maut 60 

O ye wha are sae guid yoursel 40 
Prayer, A, in the Prospect 

of Death 3 

Rantin Rovin Robin . . 14 
Scots wha hae .... 80 
Scots wha hae wi' Wallace 

bled So 

Should auld acquaintance be 

forgot 58 

Tam o' Shanter .... 63 
There was a lad was born in 

Kyle 14 



AND FIRST LINES. 

PAGE 

This wot ye all whom it con- 
cerns 49 

Thou ling'ring star, with 
less'ning ray 61 

Twa Dogs, The .... 30 

'T was in that place o' Scot- 
land's isle 30 

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped 
flow'r 45 

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous 
beastie 15 

When biting Boreas, fell and 
doure 51 

When chapman billies leave 
the street 63 

When chill November's surly 
blast 10 

Willie Brewed a Peck 
o' Maut 60 

Winter Night, A .... 51 

Ye banks, and braes, and 
streams around .... 76 

Ye flowery banks o' bonie 
Doon 71 



ESSAY ON BURNS 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. 



In the southwest corner of Scotland, on the coast, some 
thirty miles from Glasgow, is the little town of Ayr. It was 
in a two-roomed cottage near by that Robert Burns was 
born. He inherited from his strict, sturdy father a proud, 
quick temper ; from his mother the love of song. Besides 
his birthplace, Burns had three other homes in Ayrshire, — 
Mount Oliphant, Lochlea, and Mossgiel. 

Robert was a lad of seven when his father undertook to 
earn a living on the small upland farm of Mount Oliphant. 
He worked like a slave to do his part, as oldest boy, towards 
supporting the family. His regular attendance at school 
ended in his ninth year. After that he spent a few weeks 
at a time in several schools for some special purpose, but 
his principal teacher was his father. The one luxury that 
this wise father allowed himself was a library. Many books 
that he could not buy he would borrow ; and in the gloom 
that enshrouds this life of incessant toil, which impaired per- 
manently the physical and mental powers of the poet, there 
is certainly one bright spot. Although the Burns boys 
rarely saw anybody but their own family, they had in their 
father a companion who made it his business to educate his 
children. The fact must not be overlooked that Robert 
read, besides many other authors, Addison, Pope, Richard- 
son, Smollett, Milton, and Shakspere. He was an eager 
and industrious reader. He absorbed much of the Bible, 
and of A Select Collection of E?iglisk So/igs, his vade me cum, 



ii OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. 

he writes : " I pored over them driving my cart, or walking 
to labor, song by song, verse by verse — carefully noting the 
tender or sublime from affectation and fustian." 

Into this monotonous life of drudgery and economy, 
brightened by the interesting reading and the profitable 
conversation that the worthy Scotsman so persistently intro- 
duced, came a new element; when in his fifteenth year 
Robert fell in love with the girl who was his partner in har- 
vesting, and wrote "Handsome Nell," his first song. Later 
he wrote in his Commonplace Book, "I never had the least 
thought ... of turning Poet till I got once heartily in Love, 
and then Rhyme and Song were, in a manner, the sponta- 
neous language of my heart." Henceforth, as he himself said, 
this bit of tinder was " eternally lighted up by some Goddess 
or other." 

After twelve years of patient toil in Mount Oliphant, the 
Burns family removed to Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton. 
Here they lived in a similar way, but more comfortably, dur- 
ing the following seven years. Robert made several varia- 
tions in the routine of life. For a time he studied mensura- 
tion and surveying at Kirkoswald, a village full of smugglers 
and adventurers. Soon afterward he entered heartily into 
the founding and supporting of a debating society, the 
Bachelors' Club. According to his brother, he was in the 
secret of half the love affairs of the parish of Tarbolton, and 
was never without at least one of his own. 

In his twenty-third year he tried, but in vain, to win the 
affections of a certain farmer's daughter. Much depressed, 
he then went to Irvine to learn flax-dressing. " In Irvine," 
writes his brother Gilbert, " he contracted some acquaintance 
of a freer manner of thinking and living than he had been 
used to, whose society prepared him for overleaping the 
bounds of rigid virtue which had hitherto restrained him. 
During this period, also, he became a Freemason, which was 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. iii 

his first introduction to the life of a boon companion." But 
his melancholy grew on him, and his business venture proved 
a failure ; he returned to Lochlea, worked as hard as ever 
on the farm, and, if we may believe Gilbert, was frugal and 
temperate. He found time to be social and to write poems 
and songs. 

His father had lived to see something of the poet's skill, 
but he died soon afterward, anxious lest the young man 
should prove lacking in will power. 

Robert and Gilbert now leased the small farm of Mossgiel, 
near the village of Mauchline. In spite of the older son's 
determination and persistent efforts, the crops were a failure 
for two successive seasons, and the farmer lost heart. Yet, 
unfortunate as he was in his farming, undiscriminating and 
imprudent as he was in his wooing, he was so generous 
socially, and so frank to confess his follies that he had 
many friends among the worthy people of Ayrshire. The 
generous-hearted, upright Gavin Hamilton and the affection- 
ate, cultured Robert Aiken encouraged, in many ways, the 
young poet who was industriously composing in the field 
and writing out at a deal table in the humble farmhouse a 
notable collection of verse. At Hamilton's suggestion, he 
published his first volume of poetry. There was no doubt 
that the author of this volume, although only twenty-six years 
old, was a genius. 

This important event was quickly followed by another. 
The natural way for him to gain the attention of Scotland 
was by making himself known at Scotland's capital ; so he 
went to Edinburgh. The reputation of the poet attracted 
the attention of the curious. The charm of the conversa- 
tionalist held spellbound citizens of the highest rank. The 
pride and assurance of the Ayrshire plowman lent to his 
modesty and winsomeness a freedom and vigor that proved 
irresistibly fascinating. Naturally enough, in answer to the 



iv OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. 

demand of his worshipers, a second edition of his poems 
was published within six months of his coming to the Scot- 
tish capital. In spite of all this flattering attention, Burns 
did not once lose his head. 

During the summer and autumn he traveled in Scotland. 
After a Border tour, a brief visit with his family at Mossgiel, 
and three Highland tours, he returned to Edinburgh to 
spend the winter. 

To one whose interest in the localities of Scottish song 
was so keen, the excursion must have been profitable in 
many ways, and it was altogether timely, for Burns had 
begun to specialize. He had tried his hand at satirical, 
descriptive, and lyrical verse. But now he was busily col- 
lecting material for the occupation on which he was to 
focus his energy in the future. Hitherto a poet, he was 
henceforth to be a singer. 

About the second winter in Edinburgh there is little 
glamor. The aristocracy were not so hospitable, but Burns 
was prepared for their coolness. Whatever his friends 
might have done for him, had he asked assistance, it is 
to his credit that he accepted their freely offered aid in 
helping him to a farm and a position in the excise so grace- 
fully that they seemed to think they were giving him what 
he was eager to get, instead of what he was patiently making 
up his mind to endure. 

Burns was by no means unhappy when he married Jean 
Armour and settled down on the farm at Ellisland. As 
exciseman he had to ride some two hundred miles a week, 
and naturally people took pride in entertaining a guest at 
once so distinguished and so agreeable. After a stormy 
day's travel it must have been real recreation for the poet 
to doff his official dignity and enter heartily into the home 
life of friends, sometimes opening his whole soul in his 
artless way. 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. v 

But his duties did not always keep the real man in the back- 
ground. A diligent officer, severe with regular smugglers, 
he was merciful Robert Burns when he dealt with country 
brewers and retailers. He also took delight in working for 
the permanent good of his fellow-men. Long before there 
was any national movement in this direction, he set on foot 
a plan for the intellectual improvement of the community 
by taking an active part in establishing a public library. 
And while trying to do the work of two or three men, one 
day seizing a cargo of tobacco from an unlucky smuggler, 
the next punishing some poor wretch for selling liquor with- 
out a license, the same evening writing a beautiful poem, he 
did not lose sight of his high ideal of the mission of a poet. 
As in his Mossgiel days, he still " rhymed for fun"; he often 
wrote as a favor to a friend, but he could not bear the 
thought of writing for money. 

During this period of hard work he had been buoyed up 
by the hope of promotion, but he found he must for the 
present give up the longed-for supervisorship and content 
himself with being an ordinary exciseman in Dumfries. 
Upon receiving the appointment, with a salary of seventy 
pounds, he gave up the farm, which had proved a losing 
investment, and in 1791 took a house of three rooms in this 
little town. 

It was a time of revolution ; a time when quiet, pensive 
poets were stirred to their hearts' core. The excitement of 
the patriotic Burns, keenly sensitive to the welfare of Scot- 
land, and especially of her peasants, at times knew no 
bounds. His sympathy for those who were trying to secure 
their rights through the French Revolution led to vigorous 
expressions of his ideas of liberty. Yet he was a govern- 
ment official. Loyal as he was, he was accused of disloyalty, 
and came very near losing his position. The tongue-tied 
poet felt keenly that the world was going wrong and that he 



vi OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF BURNS. 

was in no position to help right it. But the storm blew 
over; Burns afterwards took an active part in fighting for a 
Liberal in an election contest, and those friends who had 
carefully prevented the printing of many of his productions 
allowed the publication of several ballads that once would 
have been condemned. 

There were intervals during this period in which he did 
almost no literary work. Much of his time was spent in 
helping Johnson make his collection of songs for his Scots 
Musical Museum and in contributing to Thomson's more 
ambitious and better edited work, the Melodies of Scotland. 
Meanwhile he was growing more melancholy. After settling 
in Dumfries the family lived in comparative comfort, yet 
toward the end of his life they were reduced to narrow 
straits. Outside of his home he had to encounter the con- 
tempt of the Dumfries aristocracy, but he recovered from 
their abuse and refused to part with his good humor. In 
his gloom he sought relief in " the merry song and the flow- 
ing bowl." At times he got real help and comfort and hope 
from religion. It was under such circumstances that he 
kept on writing songs. 

Scotland had waited for her poet till the latter half of the 
eighteenth century — a long time. Even then he was des- 
tined to lead a life of incessant toil as a farmer and gauger, 
while his real work had to be. done incidentally. His 
friends, recognizing his genius, had introduced him to 
Edinburgh, and so to Scotland ; he was becoming widely 
known, and was doing some of his best work, when, at the 
age of thirty-seven, he suddenly died. 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF CARLYLE. 



Thomas Carlyle, born in 1795, seven months before Burns 
died, was the son of a frugal, undemonstrative father, a stone 
mason, and a worthy, intelligent mother. At their home in 
Ecclefechan his mother taught him to read, his father to 
count. In his seventh year the report came from the 
village school that he was "complete "in English. In 1809, 
after three years at a "doleful and hateful Academy," he 
began his five years' hermit course at Edinburgh University. 
He studied for the ministry, as his father wished, but could 
not conscientiously make that his life work. He says of 
this miserable period, " I was without friends, experience, 
or connection in the sphere of human business, was of sly 
humor, proud enough and to spare, and had begun my 
long curriculum of dyspepsia which has never ended since." 
The question was, what should he do for a living ? The 
very difficulties in the way spurred him on to become a 
lawyer. To study law he needed money. To earn the 
money he taught school. But he could not tolerate the 
schoolmaster's drudgery, and gave up teaching ; mean- 
while he had studied law long enough to abandon it gladly 
on the ground that its miseries would lead to no reward but 
money. 

At this point in his career Carlyle received substantial 
help from others. He owed much to a college friend, 
Edward Irving, who introduced him to Miss Jane Welsh, 



viii OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF CARLYLE. 

the witty, fascinating daughter of a country surgeon. The 
next year Irving helped him to some tutoring in London. 
He soon gave that up for literary work. Dyspepsia and 
" the noises " drove him from the metropolis to a little farm 
at Hoddam Hill. There he spent a quiet year making 
translations from the German. Forty years later he referred 
to it as " perhaps the most triumphantly important " of his 
life. " He was building up his character," says Mr. John 
Nichol, " and forming the opinions which, with few mate- 
rial changes, he long continued to hold." He found his 
skepticisms and his agonizing doubtings giving way to quiet, 
spontaneous communings with Nature. 

After many wearisome attempts to obtain recognition he 
saw that his life work was to be literature. In 1826, at the 
age of thirty-one, he married Miss Welsh. They began 
housekeeping in a cottage at Comely Bank, Edinburgh. 
Mrs. Carlyle was so charming a hostess that she attracted 
to their home more than one literary friend. Among the 
most devoted was Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh 
Review. Before the end of another year, Carlyle had made 
the beginning of a literary reputation. For no sympathy 
was the young, struggling writer more grateful than for the 
genuine admiration shown by Goethe, foremost genius of 
the age, who recognized him as " a moral force of great 
importance." 

But so far he had made only a beginning. He received 
so little for his writings that, for the sake of economy and 
quiet, he retired to Craigenputtock. Here it was, fifteen 
miles from Dumfries, five from the nearest neighbor, in a 
farmhouse amidst the dreary moorland, that Carlyle wrote 
the Essay on Burns. It appeared in the Edinburgh Review 
in December, 1828. During his six years of Craigenputtock 
life, the monotony of which was relieved by Emerson's 
memorable visit and several months spent in London and 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF CARLYLE. ix 

Edinburgh, he wrote most of his biographical and critical 
essays and Sartor Resartus. 

His youth had been spent amid bleak surroundings under 
the care of parents whom he revered and loved. Then came 
the struggle to know himself and to determine his position 
in the universe. All this prepared the way for his life in 
London. 

He went to London in 1834 with little fame, less money, 
and few friends. He had written the French Revolution and 
Hero- Worship, and had resorted to the ugly expedient of 
lecturing, before the tardy recognition of the value of his 
work insured him a living. He still worked industriously, 
producing literature that gave abundant evidence of his 
independence in politics and religion. Then came the 
death of his mother, who, and who only, says Froude, " had 
stood between him and the loneliness of which he had so 
often and so passionately complained." 

He withdrew from the world more than ever for the 
" desperate dead-lift pull " with his great History of Frie- 
drich II. The result of his painful struggles was a triumph 
recognized in Scotland, England, and Germany. His own 
countrymen eagerly elected him Lord Rector of Edinburgh. 
His unique address to the students excited unbounded 
enthusiasm. It was the proudest, most joyous day of his 
life. But in the midst of his triumph his wife died. 
Stunned by her sudden death, he realized for the first 
time what she had been to him. He entered without 
warning the saddest period of his life. His fame was 
secure, but it had come too late. He cared little for it now 
that he could not share it with her. Success and failure 
were empty sounds. Yet the last years have an interest of 
their own. He had always been benevolent, eager to help 
the working classes ; and as his own affliction increased he 
became still more eager to aid those in distress. Nor was 



x OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF CARLYLE. 

he himself neglected. Painters, sculptors, literary men, and 
disciples were bent on preserving the fame of the venerable 
Chelsea Prophet. Best of all, firm friends stood by him in 
his need and comforted him. Clearly, he did not find age a 
" crown of thorns "; yet he was haunted by 

" To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow." 

He died in February, 1881, at the age of eighty- five. In 
accordance with his own wish, he was buried in Ecclefechan 
with his kindred, rather than in Westminster Abbey. 



BURNS AND CARLYLE. 



We naturally ask why Carlyle should write an account of 
Burns. He was preeminently the man to do it. The two 
men had much in common. In the first place, they were 
Scotchmen ; more than that, they were Lowlanders. Of 
peasant birth, they began life in insignificant hamlets, and 
were brought up under similar home influences. Both 
had fathers notable for their integrity and independence. 
Neither was much indebted to the schools for his early 
education, but both were helped and encouraged by far- 
seeing, ambitious parents. The lads enjoyed books and 
read eagerly and widely. So much for their boyhood. 

Each had to fight for a place in the world. Carlyle 
struggled for several years to secure a meager competence. 
With all his hard work, Burns barely made a living. The 
following statement about Carlyle applies quite as well to 
Bums : He rose — " not by birth or favor, not on the ladder 
of any established profession, but only by the internal force 
that was in him — to the highest place as a modern man of 
letters." 

Both were entertained at the Scottish capital, and both 
stood the test. Burns was not spoiled ; Carlyle was bored. 
In his Reminiscences, the dyspeptic writes of the " effulgences 
of ' Edinburgh society,' big dinners, parties," that it all passed 
away as "an obliging pageant merely." In spite of it, Burns 
retained his sincerity, his "indisputable air of Truth"; in 
spite of it, too, Carlyle remained thoroughly genuine. 



xii BURNS AND CARLYLE. 

Toward mankind their attitudes were very different, but 
neither hesitated to say just what he thought of persons he 
did not like ; neither wasted any sympathy on the upper 
classes ; both urged them to remember that those under 
them were human and were to be treated as men. Yet 
neither derived entire satisfaction from his relations with his 
fellows. Both were often heavy-hearted. The melancholy 
of the one is as genuine as the melancholy of the other. 
Burns had the happy faculty of turning his into gayety, but 
Carlyle, with all his humor, could get only partial relief. 

Both are said to have been lovable men. We know 
Burns must have been particularly lovable, and we may be 
interested in the testimony of an Aberdonian, who said, " I 
knew Carlyle, and I aver to you that his heart was as 
large and generous as his brain was powerful ; that he was 
essentially a most lovable man, and that there were depths 
of tenderness, kindliness, benevolence, and most delicate 
courtesy in him, with all his seeming ruggedness and stern- 
ness, such as I have found throughout my life rarely in any 
human being." Mr. Froude says that when we know him 
fully, we shall not love or admire him the less "because he 
had infirmities like the rest of us." 

We recognize Burns as a natural poet. " The intensity of 
Carlyle's vision," says Mr. John Nichol, " was that of a born 
artist." He adds, " None of our poets, from Chaucer and 
Dunbar to Burns and Tennyson, have been more alive to 
the influences of external nature." 

As men of genius, they have been grouped, not with the 
Miltons and the Shaksperes, but with those who are like 
" the wind-harp which answers to the breath that touches it, 
now low and sweet, now rising into wild swell or angry 
scream, as the strings are swept by some passing gust." 

Burns was a prophet-poet. He saw and thought and 
spoke for the world. In the vigorous Scotch way, he " spoke 



BURNS AND CARLYLE. x iii 

out." Carlyle was a prophet. " The mission of the 
Hebrew prophet," says Mr. Macpherson, " was by passion- 
ate utterance to keep alive in the minds of his countrymen 
a deep, abiding sense of life's mystery, sacredness, and 
solemnity. What Isaiah did for his day Carlyle did for 
the moderns." 

Such was the man, then, who helps us interpret Scotland's 
darling poet. Carlyle speaks for Scotland. His is the 
tender voice of the fond mother, who, though confident that 
her son, 

" Who lives immortal in the hearts of men," 

will never die, yet loves to tell us, her eyes now tearful, now 
glowing with a mother's pride, about her boy. All this so 
simply, so naturally, so heartily, with a pathos like Burns's 
own that softens beautifully the stern, rugged Carlyle. 



It would be difficult to find two great men about whom 
there has been more difference of opinion. Carlyle has 
been called " about the most cantankerous Scotchman that 
ever maltreated the English tongue." Mr. Richard Garnett, 
on the other hand, says that Carlyle's supremacy as a literary 
genius is attested by the fact that he is one of the very few 
in whose hands language is wholly flexible and fusible, and 
adds, " Great and deathless writer as he was, he will be 
honored by posterity for his influence on human life rather 
than for his supremacy as a literary artist." As to this in- 
fluence on human life, the dying witness of John Sterling was : 
" Towards England no man has been and done like you." 
And Froude once wrote : " Leaving out Goethe, Carlyle was 
indisputably the greatest man (if you measure greatness by 
the permanent effect he has and will produce on the minds 



x j v BURNS AND CARLYLE. 

of mankind) who has appeared in Europe for centuries. 
His character was as remarkable as his intellect. There 
has been no man at all, not Goethe himself, who in thought 
and action was so consistently true to his noblest instincts." 
As for Burns, criticise him as severely as you please, 
some of his best poetry will live forever as pure poetry. 
Wordsworth is not the only one whom Burns has shown 

" How verse may build a princely throne 
On humble truth," 

and careless, even indifferent readers can hardly help feel- 
ing that in some of his work 

" the passion and the pain 
Of hearts that long have ceased to beat remain 
To throb in hearts that are, or are to be." 

There was nothing half-hearted about him. If he was 
independent, he was so independent that "no man ever 
existed who could look down on him. They that looked 
into his eyes saw that they might look down the sky as 
easily." In striking contrast to this fearlessness was his 
sympathy, — Burns's sympathy, large, whole-souled, world- 
wide, enough for all mankind, with plenty to spare for every 
living thing, and a drop left over for the deil. 

If at times he turned teacher, his teaching was sound, 
and so effective that it was not to be forgotten. To be 
sure, he used satire so vigorously that he shocked some 
of his readers. That was their fault, not Burns's ; they 
needed the shaking up. But one cannot separate his satire 
from his humor, — his joyous, rollicking, irresistible humor. 
" His humor and his wit scorched into cinders whole heca- 
tombs of hypocrites and knaves, and his name is one at 
which ' Holy Willies ' of all degrees and homicidal Dr. 
Hornbrooks, both with and without degrees, ought to 
tremble." 



BURNS AND CARLYLE. XV 

How naturally and fully these characteristics blend in 
Burns, — humor, wit, good sense, satire, independence, sym- 
pathy, — above all, sympathy ! 

He was a man who knew men and how to appeal to men. 
When he spoke to his neighbors, he spoke with a voice that 
men everywhere understood. He has been called provin- 
cial ; he was also national and universal. And I care not 
how many are our expressions of admiration for his love of 
nature, his descriptions of scenery, his graphic power, his 
terse, lucid, forcible, often elegant style ; back of the great 
artist we must see the sincere man in his own simple way 
dealing directly with human life. 

His earlier work consisted largely of satires, descriptions 
of country life, and epistles. Afterward he drifted more 
and more into song-writing. It may be worth while to con- 
sider the question whether the miscellaneous poems show 
more clearly the greatness of the poet; but long after we 
have forgotten most of them, I fancy, we shall be sing- 
ing the songs. Exactly why it may be hard to tell. He 
expresses beautifully what we know to be true. He sings 
tunefully what we have often felt. Other poets have done 
this for us; but there is something subtle about Burns's way 
of doing it. We sometimes feel that others have made an 
effort to speak for us and to please us. Somehow we get 
the impression that Burns's writing was as unstudied, as 
natural, as spontaneous as his breathing. Many of the 
songs seem to have written themselves, and we find our- 
selves singing them as if they were our own. Other poets 
we like and admire; to some extent we may make them 
ours — Burns in his own winning way charms us; before we 
know it, we are his. 



BURNS. 1 

[1828.] 

In the modern arrangements of society, it is no uncom- 
mon thing that a man of genius must, like Butler, 'ask 
for bread and receive a stone ; ' for, in spite of our grand 
maxim of supply and demand, it is by no means the 
highest excellence that men are most forward to recognise. 5 
The inventor of a spinning-jenny is pretty sure of his 
reward in his own day; but the writer of a true poem, like 
the apostle of a true religion, is nearly as sure of the 
contrary. We do not know whether it is not an aggra- 
vation of the injustice, that there is generally a posthu- 10 
mous retribution. Robert Burns, in the course of Nature, 
might yet have been living; but his short life was spent 
in toil and penury ; and he died, in the prime of his man- 
hood, miserable and neglected: and yet already a brave 
mausoleum shines over his dust, and more than one 15 
splendid monument has been reared in other places to 
his fame ; the street where he languished in poverty is 
called by his name; the highest personages in our litera- 
ture have been proud to appear as his commentators and 
admirers ; and here is the sixth narrative of his Life that 20 
has been given to the world ! 

Mr. Lockhart thinks it necessary to apologise for this 
new attempt on such a subject : but his readers, we 
believe, will readily acquit him ; or, at worst, will censure 
only the performance of his task, not the choice of it. 25 
The character of Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot 

1 Edinburgh Review, No. 96. — The Life of Robert Burns. By 
J. G. Lockhart, LL.B. Edinburgh, 1828. 



2 BURNS. 

easily become either trite or exhausted ; and will probably 
gain rather than lose in its dimensions by the distance to 
which it is removed by Time. No man, it has been said, 
is a hero to his valet ; and this is probably true ; but the 
5 fault is at least as likely to be the valet's as the hero's. 
For it is certain, that to the vulgar eye few things are 
wonderful that are not distant. It is difficult for men to 
believe that the man, the mere man whom they see, nay 
perhaps painfully feel, toiling at their side through the 

10 poor jostlings of existence, can be made of finer clay than 
themselves. Suppose that some dining acquaintance of 
Sir Thomas Lucy's, and neighbour of John a Combe's, had 
snatched an hour or two from the preservation of his 
game, and written us a Life of Shakspeare! What 

15 dissertations should we not have had, — not on Hamlet 
and The Tempest, but on the wool-trade, and deer-stealing, 
and the libel and vagrant laws ; and how the Poacher 
became a Player ; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John had 
Christian bowels, and did not push him to extremities ! 

20 In like manner, we believe, with respect to Burns, that 
till the companions of his pilgrimage, the Honourable 
Excise Commissioners, and the Gentlemen of the Cale- 
donian Hunt, and the Dumfries Aristocracy, and all the 
Squires and Earls, equally with the Ayr Writers, and the 

25 New and Old Light Clergy, whom he had to do with 
shall have become invisible in the darkness of the Past, 
or visible only by light borrowed from his juxtaposition, 
it will be difficult to measure him by any true standard, 
or to estimate what he really was and did, in the 

30 eighteenth century, for his country and the world. It 
will be difficult, we say; but still a fair problem for 
literary historians; and repeated attempts will give us 
repeated approximations. 

His former Biographers have done something, no 



BURNS. 3 

doubt, but by no means a great deal, to assist us. Dr. 
Currie and Mr. Walker, the principal of these writers, have 
both, we think, mistaken one essentially important thing: 
Their own and the world's true relation to their author, 
and the style in which it became such men to think and 5 
to speak of such a man. Dr. Currie loved the poet truly; 
more perhaps than he avowed to his readers, or even to 
himself ; yet he everywhere introduces him with a certain 
patronising, apologetic air; as if the polite public might 
think it strange and half unwarrantable that he, a man of 10 
science, a scholar and gentleman, should do such honour 
to a rustic. In all this, however, we readily admit that 
his fault was not want of love, but weakness of faith ; and 
regret that the first and kindest of all our poet's 
biographers should not have seen farther, or believed 15 
more boldly what he saw. Mr. Walker offends more 
deeply in the same kind: and both err alike in presenting 
us with a detached catalogue of his several supposed 
attributes, virtues and vices, instead of a delineation of 
the resulting character as a living unity. This, however, 20 
is not painting a portrait ; but gauging the length and 
breadth of the several features, and jotting down their 
dimensions in arithmetical ciphers. Nay it is not so 
much as that : for we are yet to learn by what arts or 
instruments the mind could he so measured and gauged. 25 

Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, has avoided both 
these errors. He uniformly treats Burns as the high 
and remarkable man the public voice has now pronounced 
him to be : and in delineating him, he has avoided the 
method of separate generalities, and rather sought for 30 
characteristic incidents, habits, actions, sayings; in a 
word, for aspects which exhibit the whole man, as he 
looked and lived among his fellows. The book accord- 
ingly, with all its deficiencies, gives more insight, we 



4 BURNS. 

think, into the true character of Burns, than any prior 
biography : though, being written on the very popular 
and condensed scheme of an article for Constable's Mis- 
cellany, it has less depth than we could have wished and 
5 expected from a writer of such power; and contains 
rather more, and more multifarious quotations than 
belong of right to an original production. Indeed, 
Mr. Lockhart's own writing is generally so good, so clear, 
direct and nervous, that we seldom wish to see it making 

10 place for another man's. However, the spirit of the work 
is throughout candid, tolerant and anxiously conciliat- 
ing ; compliments and praises are liberally distributed, 
on all hands, to great and small ; and, as Mr. Morris 
Birkbeck observes of the society in the backwoods of 

15 America, 'the courtesies of polite life are never lost sight 
of for a moment.' But there are better things than these 
in the volume ; and we can safely testify, not only that it 
is easily and pleasantly read a first time, but may even be 
without difficulty read again. 

20 Nevertheless, we are far from thinking that the prob- 
lem of Burns's Biography has yet been adequately solved. 
We do not allude so much to deficiency of facts or doc- 
uments, — though of these we are still every day re- 
ceiving some fresh accession, — as to the limited and 

25 imperfect application of them to the great end of Biog- 
raphy. Our notions upon this subject may perhaps 
appear extravagant ; but if an individual is really of 
consequence enough to have his life and character re- 
corded for public remembrance, we have always been 

30 of opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted 
with all the inward springs and relations of his charac- 
ter. How did the world and man's life, from his par- 
ticular position, represent themselves to his mind ? How 
did coexisting circumstances modify him from without ; 



BURNS. 5 

how did he modify these from within ? With what en- 
deavours and what efficacy rule over them ; with 
what resistance and what suffering sink under them ? 
In one word, what and how produced was the effect of 
society on him ; what and how produced was his effect 5 
on society ? He who should answer these questions, in 
regard to any individual, would, as we believe, furnish a 
model of perfection in Biography. Few individuals, in- 
deed, can deserve such a study ; and many lives will be 
written, and, for the gratification of innocent curiosity, 10 
ought to be written, and read and forgotten, which are 
not in this sense biographies. But Burns, if we mistake 
not, is one of these few individuals ; and such a study, 
at least with such a result, he has not yet obtained. 
Our own contributions to it, we are aware, can be but 15 
scanty and feeble ; but we offer them with good-will, 
and trust they may meet with acceptance from those they 
are intended for. 

Burns first came upon the world as a prodigy ; and 20 
was, in that character, entertained by it, in the usual 
fashion, with loud, vague, tumultuous wonder, speedily 
subsiding into censure and neglect ; till his early and 
most mournful death again awakened an enthusiasm for 
him, which, especially as there was now nothing to be 25 
done, and much to be spoken, has prolonged itself even 
to our own time. It is true, the 'nine days' have long 
since elapsed ; and the very continuance of this clamour 
proves that Burns was no vulgar wonder. Accordingly, 
even in sober judgments, where, as years passed by, he 3c 
has come to rest more and more exclusively on his own 
intrinsic merits, and may now be well-nigh shorn of that 
casual radiance, he appears not only as a true British 
poet, but as one of the most considerable British men of 



6 BURNS. 

the eighteenth century. Let it not be objected that he 
did little. He did much, if we consider where and how. 
If the work performed was small, we must remember 
that he had his very materials to discover ; for the metal 
5 he worked in lay hid under the desert moor, where no eye 
but his had guessed its existence ; and we may almost 
say, that with his own hand he had to construct the tools 
for fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest ob- 
scurity, without help, without instruction, without model ; 

10 or with models only of the meanest sort. An edu- 
cated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless 
arsenal and magazine, rilled with all the weapons and 
engines which man's skill has been able to devise from 
the earliest time ; and he works, accordingly, with a 

15 strength borrowed from all past ages. How different is 
his state who stands on the outside of that storehouse, 
and feels that its gates must be stormed, or remain for- 
ever shut against him ! His means are the commonest 
and rudest ; the mere work done is no measure of his 

20 strength. A dwarf behind his steam-engine may remove 
mountains; but no dwarf will hew them down with a 
pickaxe; and he must be a Titan that hurls them abroad 
with his arms. 

It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. 

25 Born in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, 
and in a condition the most disadvantageous, where his 
mind, if it accomplished aught, must accomplish it under 
the pressure of continual bodily toil, nay of penury and 
desponding apprehension of the worst evils, and with no 

30 furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor 
man's hut, and the rhymes of a Ferguson or Ramsay for 
his standard of beauty, he sinks not under all these im- 
pediments: through the fogs and darkness of that obscure 
region, his lynx eye discerns the true relations of the 



BURNS. 7 

world and human life ; he grows into intellectual 
strength, and trains himself into intellectual expert- 
ness. Impelled by the expansive movement of his own 
irrepressible soul, he struggles forward into the general 
view ; and with haughty modesty lays down before us, as 5 
the fruit of his labour, a gift, which Time has now pro- 
nounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his dark- 
some drudging childhood and youth was by far the 
kindliest era of his whole life; and that he died in his 
thirty-seventh year: and then ask, If it be strange that 10 
his poems are imperfect, and of small extent, or that his 
genius attained no mastery in its art? Alas, his Sun 
shone as through a tropical tornado; and the pale Shadow 
of Death eclipsed it at noon! Shrouded in such baleful 
vapours, the genius of Burns was never seen in clear azure 15 
splendour, enlightening the world: but some beams from 
it did, by fits, pierce through; and it tinted those clouds 
with rainbow and orient colours, into a glory and stern 
grandeur, which men silently gazed on with wonder and 
tears ! 2 ° 

We are anxious not to exaggerate ; for it is exposi- 
tion rather than admiration that our readers require of 
us here ; and yet to avoid some tendency to that sicle 
is no easy matter. We love Burns, and we pity him ; and 
love and pity are prone to magnify. Criticism, it is 25 
sometimes thought, should be a cold business ; we are 
not so sure of this ; but, at all events, our concern with 
Burns is not exclusively that of critics. True and genial 
as his poetry must appear, it is not chiefly as a poet, 
but as a man, that he interests and affects us. He was 30 
often advised to write a tragedy : time and means were 
not lent him for this ; but through life he enacted a 
tragedy, and one of the deepest. We question whether 
the world has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene ; 



8 BURNS. 

whether Napoleon himself, left to brawl with Sir Hud- 
son Lowe, and perish on his rock, ' amid the melan- 
choly main,' presented to the reflecting mind such a 
'spectacle of pity and fear' as did this intrinsically 
5 nobler, gentler and perhaps greater soul, wasting itself 
away in a hopeless struggle with base entanglements 
which coiled closer and closer round him, till only 
death opened him an outlet. Conquerors are a class 
of men with whom, for most part, the world could well 

10 dispense; nor can the hard intellect, the unsympathis- 
ing loftiness and high but selfish enthusiasm of such 
persons inspire us in general with any affection; at best 
it may excite amazement; and their fall, like that of a 
pyramid, will be beheld with a certain sadness and awe. 

15 But a true Poet, a man in whose heart resides some efflu- 
ence of Wisdom, some tone of the ' Eternal Melodies,' 
is the most precious gift that can be bestowed on a 
generation: we see in him a freer, purer development 
of whatever is noblest in ourselves ; his life is a rich 

20 lesson to us; and we mourn his death as that of a bene- 
factor who loved and taught us. 

Such a gift had Nature, in her bounty, bestowed on 
us in Robert Burns ; but with queenlike indifference she 
cast it from her hand, like a thing of no moment; and 

25 it was defaced and torn asunder, as an idle bauble, 
before we recognised it. To the ill-starred Burns was 
given the power of making man's life more venerable, 
but that of wisely guiding his own life was not given. 
Destiny, — for so in our ignorance we must speak, — his 

30 faults, the faults of others, proved too hard for him; and 
that spirit, which might have soared could it but have 
walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties 
trodden under foot in the blossom; and died, we may 
almost say, without ever having lived. And so kind and 



BURNS. 9 

warm a soul; so full of inborn riches, of love to all liv- 
ing; and lifeless things ! How his heart flows out in 
sympathy over universal Nature ; and in her bleakest 
provinces discerns a beauty and a meaning ! The 
'Daisy' falls not unheeded under his ploughshare; nor 5 
the ruined nest of that ' wee, cowering, timorous beastie,' 
cast forth, after all its provident pains, to ' thole x the 
sleety dribble and cranreuch 2 cauld.' The 'hoar visage' 
of Winter delights him; he dwells with a sad and oft- 
returning fondness in these scenes of solemn desolation; 10 
but the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his 
ears ; he loves to walk in the sounding woods, for ' it 
raises his thoughts to Him that walketh on the wings of 
the wind: A true Poet-soul, for it needs but to be 
struck, and the sound it yields will be music ! But ob- 15 
serve him chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. 
What warm, all-comprehending fellow-feeling; what trust- 
ful, boundless love; what generous exaggeration of the 
object loved! His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden, 
are no longer mean and homely, but a hero and a queen, 20 
whom he prizes as the paragons of Earth. The rough 
scenes of Scottish life, not seen by him in any Arcadian 
illusion, but in the rude contradiction, in the smoke 
and soil of a too harsh reality, are still lovely to him : 
Poverty is indeed his companion, but Love also, and 25 
Courage; the simple feelings, the worth, the nobleness, 
that dwell under the straw roof, are dear and venerable 
to his heart : and thus over the lowest provinces of 
man's existence he pours the glory of his own soul; 
and they rise, in shadow and sunshine, softened and 30 
brightened into a beauty which other eyes discern not in 
the highest. He has a just self-consciousness, which too 
often degenerates into pride; yet it is a noble pride, for 

1 Endure. 2 Hoarfrost. 



10 BURNS. 

defence, not for offence ; no cold suspicious feeling, but 
a frank and social one. The Peasant Poet bears him- 
self, we might say, like a King in exile : he is cast among 
the low, and feels himself equal to the highest ; yet he 
5 claims no rank, that none may be disputed to him. The 
forward he can repel, the supercilious he can subdue ; 
pretensions of wealth or ancestry are of no avail with 
him; there is a fire in that dark eye, under which the 
' insolence of condescension ' cannot thrive. In his 

io abasement, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a 
moment the majesty of Poetry and Manhood. And yet, 
far as he feels himself above common men, he wanders 
not apart from them, but mixes warmly in their interests; 
nay throws himself into their arms, and, as it were, 

15 entreats them to love him. It is moving to see how, in 
his darkest despondency, this proud being still seeks 
relief from friendship ; unbosoms himself often to the 
unworthy ; and, amid tears, strains to his glowing heart a 
heart that knows only the name of friendship. And yet 

20 he was ' quick to learn ' ; a man of keen vision, before 
whom common disguises afforded no concealment. His 
understanding saw through the hollowness even of accom- 
plished deceivers; but there was a generous credulity in 
his heart. And so did our Peasant show himself among 

25 us; 'a soul like an ^Eolian harp, in whose strings the 
vulgar wind, as it passed through them, changed itself into 
articulate melody.' And this was he for whom the world 
found no fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers 
and vintners, computing excise-dues upon tallow, and 

30 gauging ale barrels ! In such toils was that mighty 
Spirit sorrowfully wasted: and a hundred years may pass 
on before another such is given us to waste. 

All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, 



BURNS. 11 

seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor 
mutilated fraction of what was in him ; brief, broken 
glimpses of a genius that could never show itself com- 
plete; that wanted all things for completeness : culture, 
leisure, true effort, nay even length of life. His poems 5 
are, with scarcely any exception, mere occasional effu- 
sions ; poured forth with little premeditation; expressing, 
by such means as offered, the passion, opinion, or humour 
of the hour. Never in one instance was it permitted him 
to grapple with any subject with the full collection of his 10 
strength, to fuse and mould it in the concentrated fire of 
his genius. To try by the strict rules of Art such imper- 
fect fragments, would be at once unprofitable and unfair. 
Nevertheless, there is something in these poems, marred 
and defective as they are, which forbids the most fas- 15 
tidious student of poetry to pass them by. Some sort of 
enduring quality they must have : for after fifty years of 
the wildest vicissitudes in poetic taste, they still continue 
to be read; nay, are read more and more eagerly, more 
and more extensively; and this not only by literary vir- 20 
tuosos, and that class upon whom transitory causes 
operate most strongly, but by all classes, down to the 
most hard, unlettered and truly natural class, who read 
little, and especially no poetry, except because they find 
pleasure in it The grounds of so singular and wide a 25 
popularity, which extends, in a literal sense, from the 
palace to the hut, and over all regions where the English 
tongue is spoken, are well worth inquiring into. After 
every just deduction, it seems to imply some rare excel- 
lence in these works. What is that excellence ? 30 

To answer this question will not lead us far. The 
excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, 
whether in poetry or prose; but, at the same time, it is 
plain and easily recognised : his Sincerity, his indisput- 



12 BURNS. 

able air of Truth. Here are no fabulous woes or joys ; 
no hollow fantastic sentimentalities ; no wiredrawn refin- 
ings, either in thought or feeling: the passion that is 
traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opin- 
5 ion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and 
been a light to his own steps. He does not write from 
hearsay, but from sight and experience; it is the scenes 
that he has lived and laboured amidst, that he describes: 
those scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled 

10 beautiful emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and defi- 
nite resolves; and he speaks forth what is in him, not 
from any outward call of vanity or interest, but because 
his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it with such 
melody and modulation as he can; 'in homely rustic 

15 jingle; ' but it is his own, and genuine. This is the grand 
secret for finding readers and retaining them: let him 
who would move and convince others, be first moved and 
convinced himself. Horace's rule, Si vis me flere, is 
applicable in a wider sense than the literal one. To every 

20 poet, to every writer, we might say: Be true, if you 
would be believed. Let a man but speak forth with 
genuine earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual 
condition of his own heart; and other men, so strangely 
are we all knit together by the tie of sympathy, must and 

25 will give heed to him. In culture, in extent of view, we 
may stand above the speaker, or below him; but in 
either case, his words, if they are earnest and sincere, 
will find some response within us; for in spite of all 
casual varieties in outward rank or inward, as face 

30 answers to face, so does the heart of man to man. 

This may appear a very simple principle, and one 

which Burns had little merit in discovering. True, the 

discovery is easy enough: but the practical appliance is 

not easy; is indeed the fundamental difficulty which all 



BURNS. 13 

poets have to strive with, and which scarcely one in the 
hundred ever fairly surmounts. A head too dull to dis- 
criminate the true from the false; a heart too dull to love 
the one at all risks, and to hate the other in spite of all 
temptations, are alike fatal to a writer. With either, or as 5 
more commonly happens, with both of these deficiencies 
combine a love of distinction, a wish to be original, which 
is seldom wanting, and we have Affectation, the bane of 
literature, as Cant, its elder brother, is of morals. How 
often does the one and the other front us, in poetry, as in 10 
life ! Great poets themselves are not always free of this 
vice; nay, it is precisely on a certain sort and degree of 
greatness that it is most commonly ingrafted. A strong 
effort after excellence will sometimes solace itself with a 
mere shadow of success; he who has much to unfold, will 15 
sometimes unfold it imperfectly. Byron, for instance, 
was no common man: yet if we examine his poetry with 
this view, we shall find it far enough from faultless. 
Generally speaking, we should say that it is not true. 
He refreshes us, not with the divine fountain, but too 20 
often with vulgar strong waters, stimulating indeed to 
the taste, but soon ending in dislike, or even nausea. 
Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, real men; 
we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men ? Do 
not these characters, does not the character of their 25 
author, which more or less shines through them all, rather 
appear a thing put on for the occasion; no natural or 
possible mode of being, but something intended to look 
much grander than nature ? Surely, all these stormful 
agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt and 30 
moody desperation, with so much scowling, and teeth- 
gnashing, and other sulphurous humour, is more like the 
brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to 
last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the busi- 



14 BURNS. 

ness of life, which is to last threescore and ten years. 
To our minds there is a taint of this sort, something which 
we should call theatrical, false, affected, in every one of 
these otherwise so powerful pieces. Perhaps Don Juan, 
5 especially the latter parts of it, is the only thing approach- 
ing to a sincere work, he ever wrote ; the only work where 
he showed himself, in any measure, as he was; and 
seemed so intent on his subject as, for moments, to for- 
get himself. Yet Byron hated this vice; we believe, 

10 heartily detested it : nay he had declared formal war 
against it in words. So difficult is it even for the strong- 
est to make this primary attainment, which might seem 
the simplest of all: to read its own consciousness without 
mistakes, without errors involuntary or wilful ! We recol- 

15 lectno poet of Burns's susceptibility who comes before us 
from the first, and abides with us to the last, with such a 
total want of affectation. He is an honest man, and an 
honest writer. In his successes and his failures, in his 
greatness and his littleness, he is ever clear, simple, true, 

20 and glitters with no lustre but his own. We reckon this 
to be a great virtue; to be, in fact, the root of most 
other virtues, literary as well as moral. 

Here, however, let us say, it is to the Poetry of Burns 
that we now allude; to those writings which he had time 

25 to meditate, and where no special reason existed to warp 
his critical feeling, or obstruct his endeavour to fulfil it. 
Certain of his Letters, and other fractions of prose com- 
position, by no means deserve this praise. Here, doubt- 
less, there is not the same natural truth of style; but, on 

30 the contrary, something not only stiff, but strained and 
twisted; a certain high-flown inflated tone; the stilting 
emphasis of which contrasts ill with the firmness and 
rugged simplicity of even his poorest verses. Thus no 
man, it would appear, is altogether unaffected. Does not 



BURNS. 15 

Shakspeare himself sometimes premeditate the sheerest 
bombast ! But even with regard to these Letters of Burns, 
it is but fair to state that he had two excuses. The first 
was his comparative deficiency in language. Burns, 
though for most part he writes with singular force and 5 
even gracefulness, is not master of English prose, as he 
is of Scottish verse; not master of it, we mean, in pro- 
portion to the depth and vehemence of his matter. These 
Letters strike us as the effort of a man to express some- 
thing which he has no organ fit for expressing. But a sec- 10 
ond and weightier excuse is to be found in the peculiarity 
of Burns's social rank. His correspondents are often 
men whose relation to him he has never accurately ascer- 
tained ; whom therefore he is either forearming himself 
against, or else unconsciously flattering, by adopting the 15 
style he thinks will please them. At all events, we should 
remember that these faults, even in his Letters, are not 
the rule, but the exception. Whenever he writes, as one 
would ever wish to do, to trusted friends and on real 
interests, his style becomes simple, vigorous, expressive, 20 
sometimes even beautiful. His letters to Mrs. Dunlop 
are uniformly excellent. 

But we return to his Poetry. In addition to its Sin- 
cerity, it has another peculiar merit, which indeed is but 
a mode, or perhaps a means, of the foregoing : this 25 
displays itself in his choice of subjects; or rather in his 
indifference as to subjects, and the power he has of 
making all subjects interesting. The ordinary poet, like 
the ordinary man, is forever seeking in external circum- 
stances the help which can be found only in himself. In 30 
what is familiar and near at hand, he discerns no form or 
comeliness: home is not poetical, but prosaic; it is in 
some past, distant, conventional heroic world that poetry 
resides. Were he there and not here, were he thus and 



16 BUXNS. 

not so, it would be well with him. Hence our innumer- 
able host of rose-coloured Novels and iron-mailed Epics, 
with their locality not on the Earth, but somewhere 
nearer to the Moon. Hence our Virgins of the Sun, and 
5 our Knights of the Cross, malicious Saracens in turbans, 
and copper-coloured Chiefs in wampum, and so many other 
truculent figures from the heroic times or the heroic 
climates, who on all hands swarm in our poetry. Peace 
be with them ! But yet, as a great moralist proposed 

10 preaching to the men of this century, so would we fain 
preach to the poets, ' a sermon on the duty of staying at 
home.' Let them be sure that heroic ages and heroic 
climates can do little for them. That form of life has 
attraction for us, less because it is better or nobler than 

15 our own, than simply because it is different; and even 
this attraction must be of the most transient sort. For 
will not our own age, one day, be an ancient one ; and 
have as quaint a costume as the rest; not contrasted 
with the rest, therefore, but ranked along with them in 

20 respect of quaintness? Does Homer interest us now, 
because he wrote of what passed beyond his native 
Greece, and two centuries before he was born; or because 
he wrote what passed in God's world, and in the heart of 
man, which is the same after thirty centuries ? Let our 

25 poets look to this : is their feeling really finer, truer, and 
their vision deeper than that of other men, — they have 
nothing to fear, even from the humblest subject ; is it 
not so, — they have nothing to hope, but an ephemeral 
favour, even from the highest. 

30 The poet, we imagine, can never have far to seek for a 
subject : the elements of his art are in him, and around 
him on every hand; for him the Ideal world is not remote 
from the Actual, but under it and within it : nay, he is a 
poet, precisely because he can discern it there. Wher- 



BURNS. 17 

ever there is a sky above him, and a world around him, 
the poet is in his place; for here too is man's existence, 
with its infinite longings and small acquirings; its ever- 
thwarted, ever-renewed endeavours ; its unspeakable 
aspirations, its fears and hopes that wander through 5 
Eternity ; and all the mystery of brightness and of gloom 
that it was ever made of, in any age or climate, since 
man first began to live. Is there not the fifth act of a 
Tragedy in every death-bed, though it were a peasant's, 
and a bed of heath ? And are wooings and weddings 10 
obsolete, that there can be Comedy no longer ! Or are 
men suddenly grown wise, that Laughter must no longer 
shake his sides, but be cheated of his Farce ? Man's life 
and nature is, as it was, and as it will ever be. But the 
poet must have an eye to read these things, and a heart 15 
to understand them; or they come and pass away before 
him in vain. He is a vates, a seer; a gift of vision has 
been given him. Has life no meanings for him, which 
another cannot equally decipher ; then he is no poet, 
and Delphi itself will not make him one. 20 

In this respect, Burns, though not perhaps absolutely 
a great poet, better manifests his capability, better proves 
the truth of his genius, than if he had by his own strength 
kept the whole Minerva Press going to the end of his 
literary course. He shows himself at least a poet of 25 
Nature's own making; and Nature, after all, is still the 
grand agent in making poets. We often hear of this and 
the other external condition being requisite for the exist- 
ence of a poet. Sometimes it is a certain sort of training ; 
he must have studied certain things, studied for instance 30 
' the elder dramatists,' and so learned a poetic language ; 
as if poetry lay in the tongue, not in the heart. At other 
times we are told he must be bred in a certain rank, and 
must be on a confidential footing with the higher classes ; 



18 BURNS. 

because, above all things, he must see the world. As to 
seeing the world, we apprehend this will cause him little 
difficulty, if he have but eyesight to see it with. Without 
eyesight, indeed, the task might be hard. The blind or 

5 the purblind man ' travels from Dan to Beersheba, and 
finds it all barren.' But happily every poet is born in the 
world ; and sees it, with or against his will, every day and 
every hour he lives. The mysterious workmanship of 
man's heart, the true light and the inscrutable darkness 

10 of man's destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital 
cities and crowded saloons, but in every hut and hamlet 
where men have their abode. Nay, do not the elements 
of all human virtues and all human vices; the passions 
at once of a Borgia and of a Luther, lie written, in 

15 stronger or fainter lines, in the consciousness of every 
individual bosom, that has practised honest self-examina- 
tion ? Truly, this same world may be seen in Mossgiel 
and Tarbolton, if we look well, as clearly as it ever came 
to light in Crockford's or the Tuileries itself. 

20 But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid on the 
poor aspirant to poetry; for it is hinted that he should 
have been born two centuries ago; inasmuch as poetry, 
about that date, vanished from the earth, and became no 
longer attainable by men ! Such cobweb speculations 

25 have, now and then, overhung the field of literature; but 
they obstruct not the growth of any plant there: the 
Shakspeare or the Burns, unconsciously and merely as he 
walks onward, silently brushes them away. Is not every 
genius an impossibility till he appear ? Why do we call 

30 him new and original, if we saw where his marble was 
lying, and what fabric he could rear from it ? It is not 
the material but the workman that is wanting. It is not 
the dark place that hinders, but the dim eye. A Scottish 
peasant's life was the meanest and rudest of all lives, till 



BURNS. 19 

Burns became a poet in it, and a poet of it; found it a 
man's life, and therefore significant to men. A thousand 
battle-fields remain unsung; but the Wounded Hare has not 
perished without its memorial ; a balm of mercy yet breathes 
on us from its dumb agonies, because a poet was there. 5 
Our Halloween had passed and repassed, in rude awe and 
lauditer, since the era of the Druids; but no Theocritus, 
till Burns, discerned in it the materials of a Scottish Idyl: 
neither was the Holy Fair any Council of Trent or Roman 
Jubilee; but nevertheless, Superstition and Hypocrisy and 10 
Fun having been propitious to him, in this man's hand it 
became a poem, instinct with satire and genuine comic life. 
Let but the true poet be given us, we repeat it, place him 
where and how you will, and true poetry will not be wanting. 

Independently of the essential gift of poetic feeling, as 15 
we have now attempted to describe it, a certain rugged 
sterling worth pervades whatever Burns has written ; a 
virtue, as of green fields and mountain breezes, dwells in 
his poetry ; it is redolent of natural life and hardy natural 
men. There is a decisive strength in him, and yet a 20 
sweet native gracefulness : he is tender, he is vehement, 
yet without constraint or too visible effort ; he melts the 
heart, or inflames it, with a power which seems habitual 
and familiar to him. We see that in this man there was 
the gentleness, the trembling pity of a woman, with the 25 
deep earnestness, the force and passionate ardour of a 
hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire ; as light- 
ning lurks in the drops of the summer cloud. He has a 
resonance in his bosom for every note of human feeling ; 
the high and the low, the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, 30 
are welcome in their turns to his ' lightly-moved and all- 
conceiving spirit' And observe with what a fierce 
prompt force he grasps his subject, be it what it may ! 
How he fixes, as it were, the full image of the matter in 



20 BURNS. 

his eye; full and clear in every lineament; and catches the 
real type and essence of it, amid a thousand accidents and 
superficial circumstances, no one of which misleads him ! 
Is it of reason ; some truth to be discovered ? No sophistry, 
5 no vain surface-logic detains him; quick, resolute, unerring, 
he pierces through into the marrow of the question ; and 
speaks his verdict with an emphasis that cannot be forgotten. 
Is it of description ; some visual object to be represented? 
No poet of any age or nation is more graphic than Burns : 

10 the characteristic features disclose themselves to him at a 
glance ; three lines from his hand, and we have a likeness. 
And, in that rough dialect, in that rude, often awkward 
metre, so clear and definite a likeness ! It seems a 
draughtsman working with a burnt stick; and yet the 

15 burin of a Retzsch is not more expressive or exact. 
Of this last excellence, the plainest and most compre- 
hensive of all, being indeed the root and foundation of 
every sort of talent, poetical or intellectual, we could pro- 
duce innumerable instances from the writings of Burns. 

20 Take these glimpses of a snow-storm from his Winter 
Night (the italics are ours) : 

When biting Boreas, fell and doure, 1 
Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r, 
And Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glowr 
25 Far south the lift, 2 

Dim-darkening thro 1 the flaky show V 
Or whirling drift : 

'Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd, 
Poor labour sweet in sleep was lock'd, 
30 While burns wi 1 snawy wreeths upcJwfcd 

Wild-eddying swhirl, 
Or thro' the mining outlet bock'd 3 
Down headlong hurl. 

1 Keen and stubborn. 2 Sky. 3 Gushed. 



BURN'S. 21 

Are there not ' descriptive touches ' here ? The de- 
scriber saw this thing ; the essential feature and true 
likeness of every circumstance in it; saw, and not with 
the eye only. ' Poor labour locked in sweet sleep ; ' the 
dead stillness of man, unconscious, vanquished, yet not 5 
unprotected, while such. strife of the material elements 
rages, and seems to reign supreme in loneliness : this is 
of the heart as well as of the eye ! — Look also at his 
image of a thaw, and prophesied fall of the Auld Brig : 

When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains 10 

Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains ; 

When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, 

Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil, 

Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, 

Or "haunted Garpal 1 draws his feeble source, 15 

Arous'd by blust'ring winds and spotting thowes, 2 

In vwny a torrent down his snaw-broo rowes ; 3 

While crashing ice, borne on the roaring speat* 

Sweeps dams and mills and brigs 5 a 1 to the gate; 

And from Glenbuck down to the Rottenkey, 20 

Auld Ayr is just one length en'd tumbling sea ; 

Then down ye'll hurl, Deil nor ye never rise ! 

And dash the gumlie jaups 6 up to the pouring skies. 

The last line is in itself a Poussin-picture of that Deluge ! 
The welkin has, as it were, bent down with its weight; 25 
the 'gumlie jaups ' and the 'pouring skies' are mingled 
together ; it is a world of rain and ruin. In respect of 
mere clearness and minute fidelity, the Farmer's com- 
mendation of his Auld Mare, in plough or in cart, may 
vie with Homer's Smithy of the Cyclops, or yoking 30 
of Priam's Chariot. Nor have we forgotten stout Burn- 

1 Fabulosus Hydaspes ! C. 2 Thaws. 3 Melted snow rolls. 

4 A flood after heavy rain, or thaw. 

5 Bridges. 6 Splashes of muddy water. 



22 BURNS. 

the-wind 1 and his brawny customers, inspired by Scotch 
Drink: but it is needless to multiply examples. One 
other trait of a much finer sort we select from multitudes' 
of such among his Songs. It gives, in a single line, to 
5 the saddest feeling the saddest environment and local 
habitation : 

The pale Moon is setting beyo?ui the white wave, 
And Time is setting wV me, O ; 
Farewell, false friends ! false lover, farewell ! 
io I '11 nae mair trouble them nor thee, O. 

This clearness of sight we have called the foundation 
of all talent; for in fact, unless we see our object, how 
shall we know how to place or prize it, in our under- 
standing, our imagination, our affections? Yet it is not 

15 in itself, perhaps, a very high excellence ; but capable of 
being united indifferently with the strongest, or with 
ordinary power. Homer surpasses all men in this 
quality : but strangely enough, at no great distance 
below him are Richardson and Defoe. It belongs, in 

20 truth, to what is called a lively mind; and gives no sure 
indication of the higher endowments that may exist along 
with it. In all the three cases we have mentioned, it is 
combined with great garrulity ; their descriptions are 
detailed, ample and lovingly exact ; Homer's fire bursts 

25 through, from time to time, as if by accident ; but Defoe 
and Richardson have no fire. Burns, again, is not more 
distinguished by the clearness than by the impetuous 
force of his conceptions. Of the strength, the piercing 
emphasis with which he thought, his emphasis of expres- 

30 sion may give a humble but the readiest proof. Who 
ever uttered sharper sayings than his ; words more mem- 

1 A blacksmith. 



BURNS. 23 

orable, now by their burning vehemence, now by their 
cool vigour and laconic pith ? A single phrase depicts 
a whole subject, a whole scene. We hear of 'a gentle- 
man that derived his patent of nobility direct from 
Almighty God.' Our Scottish forefathers in the battle- 5 
field struggled forward ' red-wat-shod '.■ in this one word, 
a full vision of horror and carnage, perhaps too fright- 
fully accurate for Art ! 

In fact, one of the leading features in the mind of 
Burns is this vigour of his strictly intellectual percep- 10 
tions. A resolute force is ever visible in his judgments, 
and in his feelings and volitions. Professor Stewart 
says of him, with some surprise : ' All the faculties of 
Burns's mind were, as far as I could judge, equally 
vigorous; and his predilection for poetry was rather the 15 
result of his own enthusiastic and impassioned temper, 
than of a genius exclusively adapted to that species of 
composition. From his conversation I should have pro- 
nounced him to be fitted to excel in whatever walk of 
ambition he had chosen to exert his abilities.' But this, 20 
if we mistake not, is at all times the very essence of a 
truly poetical endowment. Poetry, except in such cases 
as that of Keats, where the whole consists in a weak- 
eyed maudlin sensibility, and a certain vague random 
tunefulness of nature, is no separate faculty, no organ 25 
which can be superadded to the rest, or disjoined from 
them ; but rather the result of their general harmony and 
completion. The feelings, the gifts that exist in the Poet 
are those that exist, with more or less development, in 
every human soul : the imagination, which shudders at 30 
the Hell of Dante, is the same faculty, weaker in 
degree, which called that picture into being. How does 
the Poet speak to men, with power, but by being still 
more a man than they ? Shakspeare, it has been well 



24 BURNS. 

observed, in the planning and completing of his trage- 
dies, has shown an Understanding, were it nothing more, 
which might have governed states, or indited a Novum 
Organum. What Burns's force of understanding may 
5 have been, we have less means of judging : it had to 
dwell among the humblest objects ; never saw Philoso- 
phy ; never rose, except by natural effort and for short 
intervals, into the region of great ideas. Nevertheless, 
sufficient indication, if no proof sufficient, remains for 

10 us in his works : we discern the brawny movements of a 
gigantic though untutored strength ; and can understand 
how, in conversation, his quick sure insight into men and 
things may, as much as aught else about him, have 
amazed the best thinkers of his time and country. 

15 But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns 
is fine as well as strong. The more delicate relations of 
things could not well have escaped his eye, for they were 
intimately present to his heart. The logic of the senate 
and the forum is indispensable, but not all-sufficient ; 

20 nay perhaps the highest Truth is that which will the 
most certainly elude it. For this logic works by words, 
and ' the highest,' it has been said, ' cannot be expressed 
in words.' We are not without tokens of an openness for 
this higher truth also, of a keen though uncultivated 

25 sense for it, having existed in Burns. Mr. Stewart, it 
will be remembered, ' wonders,' in the passage above 
quoted, that Burns had formed some distinct conception 
of the ' doctrine of association.' We rather think that far 
subtler things than the doctrine of association had from 

30 of old been familiar to him. Here, for instance : 

' We know nothing,' thus writes he, 'or next to nothing, of 
the structure of our souls, so we cannot account for those seem- 
ing caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased 
with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a 



BURNS. 25 

different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have 
some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the moun- 
tain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild brier rose, the 
budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang 
over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary 5 
whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing 
cadence of a troop of gray plover in an autumnal morning, 
without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of 
devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this 
be owing ? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the 10 
/Eolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing acci- 
dent; or do these workings argue something within us above 
the trodden clod ? I own myself partial to such proofs of 
those awful and important realities: a God that made all 
things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of 15 
weal or wo beyond death and the grave.' 

Force and fineness of understanding are often spoken 
of as something different from general force and fineness 
of nature, as something partly independent of them. The 
necessities of language so require it ; but in truth these 20 
qualities are not distinct and independent ; except in 
special cases, and from special causes, they ever go to- 
gether. A man of strong understanding is generally a 
man of strong character; neither is delicacy in the one 
kind often divided from delicacy in the other. No one, 25 
at all events, is ignorant that in the Poetry of Burns 
keenness of insight keeps pace with keenness of feeling; 
that his light is not more pervading than his warmth. 
He is a man of the most impassioned temper ; with 
passions not strong only, but noble, and of the sort in 30 
which great virtues and great poems take their rise. It 
is reverence, it is love towards all Nature that inspires 
him, that opens his eyes to its beauty, and makes heart 
and voice eloquent in its praise. There is a true old 



26 BURNS. 

saying, that ' Love furthers knowledge : ' but, above all, it 
is the living essence of that knowledge which makes 
poets ; the first principle of its existence, increase, ac- 
tivity. Of Burns's fervid affection, his generous all-em- 
5 bracing Love, we have spoken already, as of the grand 
distinction of his nature, seen equally in word and deed, 
in his Life and in his Writings. It were easy to multiply 
examples. Not man only, but all that environs man in 
the material and moral universe, is lovely in his sight : 

io 'the hoary hawthorn,' the 'troop of gray plover,' the 
' solitary curlew,' all are dear to him; all live in this 
Earth along with him, and to all he is knit as in mysteri- 
ous brotherhood. How touching is it, for instance, that, 
amidst the gloom of personal misery, brooding over the 

15 wintry desolation without him and within him, he thinks 
of the ' ourie * cattle ' and ' silly sheep,' and their suffer- 
ings in the pitiless storm ! 

I thought me on the ourie cattle, 
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 
20 O' wintry war, 

Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing, 2 sprattle, 3 

Beneath a scaur. 4 
Ilk 5 happing bird, wee helpless thing, 
That in the merry months o' spring 
25 Delighted me to hear thee sing, 

What comes o' thee ? 
Where wilt thou cow'r thy chittering 6 wing, 
And close thy ee ? 

The tenant of the mean hut, with its ' ragged roof and 
30 chinky wall,' has a heart to pity even these ! This is 

1 Shivering. 4 Cliff. 

2 Wading. 5 Each. 

3 Struggle. 6 Trembling with cold. 



BURNS. 27 

worth several homilies on Mercy; for it is the voice of 
Mercy herself. Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy; his 
soul rushes forth into all realms of being; nothing that 
has existence can be indifferent to him. The very Devil 
he cannot hate with right orthodoxy: 5 

But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben; 
O, wad ye tak a thought and men' ! 
Ye aiblins 1 might, — I dinna ken, — 

Still hae a stake ; 
I'm wae to think upo' yon den, 10 

Even for your sake ! 

"He is the father of curses and lies/' said Dr. Slop ; 
" and is cursed and damned already." " I am sorry for 
it," quoth my uncle Toby ! — a Poet without Love were 
a physical and metaphysical impossibility. 15 

But has it not been said, in contradiction to this prin- 
ciple, that 'Indignation makes verses'? It has been so 
said, and is true enough : but the contradiction is 
apparent, not real. The Indignation which makes 
verses is, properly speaking, an inverted Love ; the love 20 
of some right, some worth, some goodness, belonging to 
ourselves or others, which has been injured, and which 
this tempestuous feeling issues forth to defend and 
avenge. No selfish fury of heart, existing there as a 
primary feeling, and without its opposite, ever produced 25 
much Poetry : otherwise, we suppose, the Tiger were the 
most musical of all our choristers. Johnson said, he 
loved a good hater ; by which he must have meant, not 
so much one that hated violently, as one that hated 
wisely ; hated baseness from love of .nobleness. How- 30 
ever, in spite of Johnson's paradox, tolerable enough for 
once in speech, but which need not have been so often 

1 Perhaps. 



28 BURA T S. 

adopted in print since then, we rather believe that good 
men deal sparingly in hatred, either wise or unwise : nay 
that a ' good hater ' is still a desideratum in this world. 
The Devil, at least, who passes for the chief and best of 
5 that class, is said to be nowise an amiable character. 

Of the verses which Indignation makes, Burns has also 
given us specimens : and among the best that were ever 
given. Who will forget his ' Dweller in yon Dungeon 
dark; ' a piece that might have been chanted by the 
io Furies of yEschylus ? The secrets of the infernal Pit are 
laid bare ; a boundless baleful ' darkness visible ; ' and 
streaks of hell-fire quivering madly in its black haggard 
bosom ! 

Dweller in yon Dungeon dark, 
: 5 Hangman of Creation, mark ! 

Who in widow's weeds appears, 
Laden with unhonoured years, 
Noosing with care a bursting purse, 
Baited with many a deadly curse ! 

20 Why should we speak of Scots wha hae wV Wallace bled ; 
since all know of it, from the king to the meanest of his 
subjects ? This dithyrambic was composed on horse- 
back ; in riding in the middle of tempests, over the 
wildest Galloway moor, in company with a Mr. Syme, 

25 who, observing the poet's looks, forbore to speak, — 
judiciously enough, for a man composing Bruce 1 s Address 
might be unsafe to trifle with. Doubtless this stern 
hymn was singing itself, as he formed it, through the 
soul of Burns : but to the external ear, it should be sung 

30 with the throat of the whirlwind. So long as there is 
warm blood in the heart of Scotchman or man, it will 
move in fierce thrills under this war-ode ; the best, we 
believe, that was ever written by any pen. 



BURNS. 29 

Another wild stormful Song, that dwells in our ear and 
mind with a strange tenacity, is Macphersori 's Farewell. 
Perhaps there is something in the tradition itself that co- 
operates. For was not this grim Celt, this shaggy North- 
land Cacus, that ' lived a life of sturt and strife, and died 5 
by treacherie,' — was not he too one of the Nimrods and 
Napoleons of the earth, in the arena of his own remote 
misty glens, for want of a clearer and wider one ? Nay, 
was there not a touch of grace given him ? A fibre of 
love and softness, of poetry itself, must have lived in his 10 
savage heart : for he composed that air the night before 
his execution ; on the wings of that poor melody his bet- 
ter soul would soar away above oblivion, pain and all the 
ignominy and despair, which, like an avalanche, was hurl- 
ing him to the abyss ! Here also, as at Thebes, and in 15 
Pelops' line, was material Fate matched against man's 
Free-will ; matched in bitterest though obscure duel ; 
and the ethereal soul sank not, even in its blindness, with- 
out a cry which has survived it. But who, except Burns, 
could have given words to such a soul ; words that we 20 
never listen to without a strange half-barbarous, half- 
poetic fellow-feeling ? 

Sae ranti?igly, l sae wantonly, 

Sae dauntingly gaed he ; 
He played a spririg, and danced it round, 25 

Below the gallows-tree. 

Under a lighter disguise, the same principle of Love, 
which we have recognised as the great characteristic of 
Burns, and of all true poets, occasionally manifests itself 
in . the shape of Humour. Everywhere, indeed, in his 30 
sunny moods, a full buoyant flood of mirth rolls through 
the mind of Burns ; he rises to the high, and stoops to 

l Gleefully, 



30 BURNS. 

the low, and is brother and playmate to all Nature. We 
speak not of his bold and often irresistible faculty of car- 
icature ; for this is Drollery rather than Humour : but a 
much tenderer sportfulness dwells in him ; and comes 
5 forth here and there, in evanescent and beautiful touches ; 
as in his Address to the Mouse, or the Farmer's Mare, or 
in his Elegy on poor Mailie, which last may be reckoned 
his happiest effort of this kind. In these pieces there 
are traits of a Humour as fine as that of Sterne ; yet 

io altogether different, original, peculiar, — the Humour of 
Burns. 

Of the tenderness, the playful pathos, and many other 
kindred qualities of Burns's Poetry, much more might be 
said ; but now, with these poor outlines of a sketch, we 

15 must prepare to quit this part of our subject. To speak 
of his individual Writings, adequately and with any de- 
tail, would lead us far beyond our limits. As already 
hinted, we can look on but few of these pieces as, in 
strict critical language, deserving the name of Poems : 

20 they are rhymed eloquence, rhymed pathos, rhymed sense ; 
yet seldom essentially melodious, aerial, poetical. Tarn 
o'Shanter itself, which enjoys so high a favour, does not 
appear to us at all decisively to come under this last cat- 
egory. It is not so much a poem, as a piece of spark- 

25 ling rhetoric ; the heart and body of the story still lies 
hard and dead. He has not gone back, much less car- 
ried us back, into that dark, earnest, wondering age, when 
the tradition was believed, and when it took its rise ; he 
does not attempt, by any new-modeling of his supernat- 

30 ural ware, to strike anew that deep mysterious chord of 
human nature, which once responded to such things ; 
and which lives in us too, and will forever live, though 
silent now, or vibrating with far other notes, and to far 
different issues. Our German readers will understand us, 



BURNS. 31 

when we say, that he is not the Tieck but the Musaus of 
this tale. Externally it is all green and living ; yet look 
closer, it is no firm growth, but only ivy on a rock. The 
piece does not properly cohere : the strange chasm which 
yawns in our incredulous imaginations between the Ayr 5 
public-house and the gate of Tophet, is nowhere bridged 
over, nay the idea of such a bridge is laughed at ; and 
thus the Tragedy of the adventure becomes a mere 
drunken phantasmagoria, or many-coloured spectrum 
painted on ale-vapours, and the Farce alone has any 10 
reality. We do not say that Burns should have made 
much more of this tradition ; we rather think that, for 
strictly poetical purposes, not much was to be made of it. 
Neither are we blind to the deep, varied, genial power 
displayed in what he has actually accomplished ; but we l S 
find far more ' Shakspearean ' qualities, as these of Tarn 
d Shanter have been fondly named, in many of his other 
pieces ; nay we incline to believe that this latter might 
have been written, all but quite as well, by a man who, 
in place of genius, had only possessed talent. 20 

Perhaps we may venture to say, that the most strictly 
poetical of all his ' poems ' is one which does not appear 
in Currie's Edition ; but has been often printed before 
and since, under the humble title of The Jolly Beggars. 
The subject truly is among the lowest in Nature ; but it -5 
only the more shows our Poet's gift in raising it into the 
domain of Art. To our minds, this piece seems thor- 
oughly compacted ; melted together, refined; and poured 
forth in one flood of true liquid harmony. It is light, 
airy, soft of movement ; yet sharp and precise in its 3° 
details ; every face is a portrait : that ranch carlin, that 
wee Apollo, that Son of Mars, are Scottish, yet ideal; the 
scene is at once a dream, and the very Ragcastle of 
'Poosie-Nansie.' Farther, it seems in a considerable 



32 BUKNS. 

degree complete, a real self-supporting Whole, which is 
the highest merit in a poem. The blanket of the Night 
is drawn asunder for a moment ; in full, ruddy, flaming 
light, these rough tatterdemalions are seen in their bois- 
5 terous revel ; for the strong pulse of Life vindicates its 
right to gladness even here ; and when the curtain closes, 
we prolong the action, without effort ; the next day as 
the last, our Caird and our Balladmonger are singing and 
soldiering ; their ' brats 1 and callets ' 2 are hawking, beg- 

10 ging, cheating ; and some other night, in new combinations, 
they will wring from Fate another hour of wassail and 
good cheer. Apart from the universal sympathy with 
man which this again bespeaks in Burns, a genuine in- 
spiration and no inconsiderable technical talent are man- 

15 ifested here. There is the fidelity, humour, warm life 
and accurate painting and grouping of some Teniers, for 
whom hostlers and carousing peasants are not without 
significance. It would be strange, doubtless, to call this 
the best of Burns's writings: we mean to say only, that 

20 it seems to us the most perfect of its kind, as a piece of 
poetical composition, strictly so called. In the Beggars' 
Opera, in the Beggars' Bush, as other critics have already 
remarked, there is nothing which, in real poetic vigour, 
equals this Cantata ; nothing, as we think, which comes 

25 within many degrees of it. 

But by far the most finished, complete and truly in- 
spired pieces of Burns are, without dispute, to be found 
among his Songs. It is here that, although through a 
small aperture, his light shines with least obstruction ; in 
30 its highest beauty and pure sunny clearness. The reason 
may be, that Song is a brief simple species of composi- 
tion ; and requires nothing so much for its perfection as 
1 Rags. 2 Wenches. 



BURNS. 33 

genuine poetic feeling, genuine music of heart. Yet the 
Song has its rules equally with the Tragedy ; rules which 
in most cases are poorly fulfilled, in many cases are not 
so much as felt. We might write a long essay on the 
Songs of Burns ; which we reckon by far the best that 5 
Britain has yet produced : for indeed, since the era of 
Queen Elizabeth, we know not that, by any other hand, 
aught truly worth attention has been accomplished in this 
department. True, we have songs enough 'by persons 
of quality'; we have tawdry, hollow, wine-bred madrigals; 10 
many a rhymed speech ' in the flowing and watery vein 
of Ossorius the Portugal Bishop,' rich in sonorous words, 
and, for moral, dashed perhaps with some tint of a senti- 
mental sensuality; all which many persons cease not 
from endeavouring to sing; though for most part, we 15 
fear, the music is but from the throat outwards, or at best 
from some region far enough short of the Soul; not in 
which, but in a certain inane Limbo of the Fancy, or even 
in some vaporous debateable-land on the outskirts of the 
Nervous System, most of such madrigals and rhymed 20 
speeches seem to have originated. 

With the Songs of Burns we must not name these 
things. Independently of the clear, manly, heartfelt senti- 
ment that ever pervades his poetry, his Songs are honest 
in another point of view : in form, as well as in spirit. 25 
They do not affect to be set to music, but they actually 
and in themselves are music ; they have received their 
life, and fashioned themselves together, in the medium of 
Harmony, as Venus rose from the bosom of the sea. 
The story, the feeling, is not detailed, but suggested ; not 3° 
said, or spouted, in rhetorical completeness and co- 
herence ; but sung, in fitful gushes, in glowing hints, in 
fantastic breaks, in wa?'blitigs not of the voice only, but 
of the whole mind. We consider this to be the essence 



34 BURNS. 

of a song ; and that no songs since the little careless 
catches, and as it were drops of song, which Shakspeare 
has here and there sprinkled over his Plays, fulfil this 
condition in nearly the same degree as most of Burns's 
5 do. Such grace and truth of external movement, too, 
presupposes in general a corresponding force and truth 
of sentiment and inward meaning. The Songs of Burns 
are not more perfect in the former quality than in the 
latter. With what tenderness he sings, yet with what 

10 vehemence and entireness ! There is a piercing wail in 
his sorrow, the purest rapture in his joy ; he burns with 
the sternest ire, or laughs with the loudest or sliest 
mirth ; and yet he is sweet and soft, ' sweet as the smile 
when fond lovers meet, and soft as their parting tear.' 

15 If we farther take into account the immense variety of 
his subjects ; how, from the loud flowing revel in Willie 
brewed a Peck 0' Maut, to the still, rapt enthusiasm of sad- 
ness for Mary in Heaven ; from the glad kind greeting of 
Aula 1 Langsvne, or the comic archness of Duncan Gray, 

20 to the fire-eyed fury of Scots who, hae wV Wallace bled, 
he has found a tone and words for every mood of man's 
heart, — it will seem a small praise if we rank him as the 
first of all our Song-writers ; for we know not where to 
find one worthy of being second to him. 

25 It is on his songs, as we believe, that Burns's chief 
influence as an author will ultimately be found to de- 
pend : nor, if our Fletcher's aphorism is true, shall we 
account this a small influence. ' Let me make the songs 
of a people,' said he, ' and you shall make its laws.' 

3° Surely, if ever any Poet might have equalled himself with 
Legislators on this ground, it was Burns. His Songs are 
already part of the mother-tongue, not of Scotland only 
but of Britain, and of the millions that in all ends of the 
earth speak a British language. In hut and hall, as the 



BURNS. 35 

heart unfolds itself in many-coloured joy and woe of 
existence, the name, the voice of that joy and that woe, is 
the name and voice which Burns has given them. 
Strictly speaking, perhaps no British man has so deeply 
affected the thoughts and feelings of so many men, as 5 
this solitary and altogether private individual, with means 
apparently the humblest. 

In another point of view, moreover, we incline to think 
that Burns's influence may have been considerable : we 
mean, as exerted specially on the Literature of his coun- 10 
try, at least on the Literature of Scotland. Among the 
great changes which British, particularly Scottish litera- 
ture, has undergone since that period, one of the greatest 
will be found to consist in its remarkable increase of 
nationality. Even the English writers, most popular in 15 
Burns's time, were little distinguished for their literary 
patriotism, in this its best sense. A certain attenuated 
cosmopolitanism had, in good measure, taken place of the 
old insular home-feeling ; literature was, as it were, with- 
out any local environment ; was not nourished by the 20 
affections which spring from a native soil. Our Grays 
and Glovers seemed to write almost as if in vacuo ; the 
thing written bears no mark of place ; it is not written so 
much for Englishmen, as for men ; or rather, which is 
the inevitable result of this, for certain Generalisations 2 5 
which philosophy termed men. Goldsmith is an excep- 
tion : not so Johnson ; the scene of his Rambler is little 
more English than that of his Rasselas. 

But if such was, in some degree, the case with England, 
it was, in the highest degree, the case with Scotland. In 3° 
fact, our Scottish literature had, at that period, a very 
singular aspect ; unexampled, so far as we know, except 
perhaps at Geneva, where the same state of matters ap- 
pears still to continue. For a long period after Scotland 



36 BURNS. 

became British, we had no literature : at the date when 
Addison and Steele were writing their Spectators, our good 
John Boston was writing, with the noblest intent, but 
alike in defiance of grammar and philosophy, his Four- 
5 fold State of Man. Then came the schisms in our 
National Church, and the fiercer schisms in our Body 
Politic : Theologic ink, and Jacobite blood, with gall 
enough in both cases, seemed to have blotted out the 
intellect of the country : however, it was only obscured, 

io not obliterated. Lord Karnes made nearly the first 
attempt at writing English ; and ere long, Hume, Robert- 
son, Smith, and a whole host of followers, attracted hither 
the eyes of all Europe. And yet in this brilliant resus- 
citation of our 'fervid genius,' there was nothing truly 

15 Scottish, nothing indigenous ; except, perhaps, the natural 
impetuosity of intellect, which we sometimes claim, and 
are sometimes upbraided with, as a characteristic of our 
nation. It is curious to remark that Scotland, so full of 
writers, had no Scottish culture, nor indeed any English ; 

20 our culture was almost exclusively French. It was by 
studying Racine and Voltaire, Batteux and Boileau, that 
Karnes had trained himself to be a critic and philosopher ; 
it was the light of Montesquieu and Mably that guided 
Robertson in his political speculations ; Quesnay's lamp 

2 5 that kindled the lamp of Adam Smith. Hume was too 
rich a man to borrow ; and perhaps he reacted on the 
French more than he was acted on by them : but neither 
had he aught to do with Scotland ; Edinburgh, equally 
with La Fleche, was but the lodging and laboratory, in 

3° which he not so much morally lived, as metaphysically 
investigated. Never, perhaps, was there a class of writers 
so clear and well-ordered, yet so totally destitute, to all 
appearance, of any patriotic affection, nay of any human 
affection whatever. The French wits of the period were 



BURNS. 37 

as unpatriotic : but their general deficiency in moral prin- 
ciple, not to say their avowed sensuality and unbelief in 
all virtue, strictly so called, render this accountable 
enough. We hope, there is a patriotism founded on 
something better than prejudice ; that our country may 5 
be dear to us, without injury to our philosophy ; that in 
loving and justly prizing all other lands, we may prize 
justly, and yet love before all others, our own stern 
Motherland, and the venerable Structure of social and 
moral Life, which Mind has through long ages been 10 
building up for us there. Surely there is nourishment for 
the better part of man's heart in all this : surely the roots, 
that have fixed themselves in the very core of man's 
being, may be so cultivated as to grow up not into briers, 
but into roses, in the field of his life ! Our Scottish sages 15 
have no such propensities : the field of their life shows 
neither briers nor roses ; but only a flat, continuous 
thrashing-floor for Logic, whereon all questions, from the 
' Doctrine of Rent ' to the ' Natural History of Religion,' 
are thrashed and sifted with the same mechanical im- 20 
partiality ! 

With Sir Walter Scott at the head of our literature, it 
cannot be denied that much of this evil is past, or rapidly 
passing away : our chief literary men, whatever other 
faults they may have, no longer live among us like a 25 
French Colony, or some knot of Propaganda Mission- 
aries ; but like natural-born subjects of the soil, partak- 
ing and sympathising in all our attachments, humours 
and habits. Our literature no longer grows in water but 
in mould, and with the true racy virtues of the soil and 3° 
climate. How much of this change may be due to Burns, 
or to any other individual, it might be difficult to estimate. 
Direct literary imitation of Burns was not to be looked 
for. But his example, in the fearless adoption of domes- 



38 BURNS. 

tic subjects, could not but operate from afar ; and cer- 
tainly in no heart did the love of country ever burn with 
a warmer glow than in that of Burns: * a tide of Scottish 
prejudice,' as he modestly calls this deep and generous 

5 feeling, ' had been poured along his veins ; and he felt 
that it would boil there till the flood-gates shut in eter- 
nal rest.' It seemed to him, as if he could do so little 
for his country, and yet would so gladly have done all. 
One small province stood open for him, — that of Scot- 

10 tish Song ; and how eagerly he entered on it, how de- 
votedly he laboured there ! In his toilsome journeyings, 
this object never quits him ; it is the little happy-valley 
of his careworn heart. In the gloom of his own afflic- 
tion, he eagerly searches after some lonely brother of the 

15 muse, and rejoices to snatch one other name from the 
oblivion that was covering it ! These were early feelings, 
and they abode with him to the end : 

... A wish (I mind its power), 
A wish, that to my latest hour 
20 Will strongly heave my breast, — 

That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some useful plan or book could make, 
Or sing a sang at least. 

The rough bur Thistle spreading wide 
25 Amang the bearded bear, 

I turn'd my weeding-clips aside, 
And spared the symbol dear. 

But to leave the mere literary character of Burns, 
which has already detained us too long. Far more inter- 
30 esting than any of his written works, as it appears to us, 
are his acted ones : the Life he willed and was fated to 
lead among his fellow-men. These Poems are but like 
little rhymed fragments scattered here and there in the 



BURNS. 39 

grand unrhymed Romance of his earthly existence ; and 
it is only when intercalated in this at their proper places, 
that they attain their full measure of significance. And 
this, too, alas, was but a fragment ! The plan of a 
mighty edifice had been sketched; some columns, por- 5 
ticos, firm masses of building, stand completed ; the rest 
more or less clearly indicated ; with many a far-stretching 
tendency, which only studious and friendly eyes can now 
trace towards the purposed termination. For the work 
is broken off in the middle, almost in the beginning ; 10 
and rises among us, beautiful and sad, at once unfinished 
and a ruin ! If charitable judgment was necessary in 
estimating his Poems, and justice required that the aim 
and the manifest power to fulfil it must often be accepted 
for the fulfilment ; much more is this the case in regard 15 
to his Life, the sum and result of all his endeavours, where 
his difficulties came upon him not in detail only, but in 
mass ; and so much has been left unaccomplished, nay 
was mistaken, and altogether marred. 

Properly speaking, there is but one era in the life of 20 
Burns, and that the earliest. We have not youth and 
manhood, but only youth : for, to the end, we discern no 
decisive change in the complexion of his character ; in 
his thirty-seventh year, he is still, as it were, in youth. 
With all that resoluteness of judgment, that penetrating 25 
insight, and singular maturity of intellectual power, ex- 
hibited in his writings, he never attains to any clearness 
regarding himself ; to the last, he never ascertains his 
peculiar aim, even with such distinctness as is common 
among ordinary men ; and therefore never can pursue it 30 
with that singleness of will, which insures success and 
some contentment to such men. To the last, he wavers 
between two purposes : glorying in his talent, like a true 
poet, he yet cannot consent to make this his chief and 



40 BURNS. 

sole glory, and to follow it as the one thing needful, 
through poverty or riches, through good or evil report. 
Another far meaner ambition still cleaves to him ; he 
must dream and struggle about a certain ' Rock of Inde- 
5 pendence ; ' which, natural and even admirable as it 
might be, was still but a warring with the world, on the 
comparatively insignificant ground of his being more 
completely or less completely supplied with money than 
others ; of his standing at a higher or at a lower altitude 

10 in general estimation than others. For the world still 
appears to him, as to the young, in borrowed colours: he 
expects from it what it cannot give to any man ; seeks 
for contentment, not within himself, in action and wise 
effort, but from without, in the kindness of circumstances, 

15 in love, friendship, honour, pecuniary ease. He would 
be happy, not actively and in himself, but passively and 
from some ideal cornucopia of Enjoyments, not earned by 
his own labour, but showered on him by the beneficence 
of Destiny. Thus, like a young man, he cannot gird 

20 himself up for any worthy well-calculated goal, but 
swerves to and fro, between passionate hope and re- 
morseful disappointment : rushing onwards with a deep 
tempestuous force, he surmounts or breaks asunder many 
a barrier ; travels, nay advances far, but advancing only 

25 under uncertain guidance, is ever and anon turned from 
his path ; and to the last cannot reach the only true hap- 
piness of a man, that of clear decided Activity in the 
sphere for which, by nature and circumstances, he has 
been fitted and appointed. 

30 We do not say these things in dispraise of Burns ; nay, 
perhaps, they but interest us the more in his favour. 
This blessing is not given soonest to the best ; but rather, 
it is often the greatest minds that are latest in obtaining 
it ; for where most is to be developed, most time may be 



BURNS. 41 

required to develop it. A complex condition had been 
assigned him from without ; as complex a condition from 
within : no 'preestablished harmony' existed between the 
clay soil of Mossgiel and the empyrean soul of Robert 
Burns ; it was not wonderful that the adjustment between 5 
them should have been long postponed, and his arm long 
cumbered, and his sight confused, in so vast and discord- 
ant an economy as he had been appointed steward over. 
Byron was, at his death, but a year younger than Burns ; 
and through life, as it might have appeared, far more 10 
simply situated : yet in him too we can trace no such 
adjustment, no such moral manhood; but at best, and 
only a little before his end, the beginning of what seemed 
such. 

By much the most striking incident in Burns's Life is 15 
his journey to Edinburgh; but perhaps a still more 
important one is his residence at Irvine, so early as in 
his twenty-third year. Hitherto his life had been poor 
and toilworn ; but otherwise not ungenial, and, with 
all its distresses, by no means unhappy. In his parent- 20 
age, deducting outward circumstances, he had every 
reason to reckon himself fortunate. His father was a 
man of thoughtful, intense, earnest character, as the 
best of our peasants are ; valuing knowledge, possessing 
some, and what is far better and rarer, openminded for 25 
more : a man with a keen insight and devout heart ; 
reverent towards God, friendly therefore at once, and 
fearless towards all that God has made: in one word, 
though but a hard-handed peasant, a complete and fully 
unfolded Man. Such a father is seldom found in any 3° 
rank in society ; and was worth descending far in 
society to seek. Unfortunately, he was very poor ; had 
he been even a little richer, almost never so little, the 
whole might have issued far otherwise. Mighty events 



42 BURNS. 

turn on a straw ; the crossing of a brook decides the con- 
quest of the world. Had this William Burns's small 
seven acres of nursery-ground anywise prospered, the boy 
Robert had been sent to school ; had struggled forward, 

5 as so many weaker men do, to some university ; come 
forth not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular well-trained 
intellectual workman, and changed the whole course of 
British Literature, — for it lay in him to have done this ! 
But the nursery did not prosper ; poverty sank his 

10 whole family below the help of even our cheap school- 
system : Burns remained a hard-worked ploughboy, and 
British literature took its own course. Nevertheless, 
even in this rugged scene there is much to nourish him. 
If he drudges, it is with his brother, and -for his father 

15 and mother, whom he loves, and would fain shield from 
want. Wisdom is not banished from their poor hearth, 
nor the balm of natural feeling : the solemn words, Let 
us worship God, are heard there from a ' priest-like 
father' ; if threatenings or unjust men throw mother and 

20 children into tears, these are tears not of grief only, but 
of holiest affection ; every heart in that humble group 
feels itself the closer knit to every other ; in their hard 
warfare they are there together, a ' little band of breth- 
ren.' Neither are such tears, and the deep beauty that 

25 dwells in them, their only portion. Light visits the 
hearts as it does the eyes of all living : there is a force, 
too, in this youth, that enables him to trample on misfor- 
tune ; nay to bind it under his feet to make him sport. 
For a bold, warm, buoyant humour of character has been 

30 given him ; and so the thick-coming shapes of evil are 
welcomed with a gay, friendly irony, and in their closest 
pressure he bates no jot of heart or hope. Vague ^earn- 
ings of ambition fail not, as he grows up ; dreamy fancies 
hang like cloud-cities around him ; the curtain of Exist- 



BURNS. 43 

ence is slowly rising, in many-coloured splendour and 
gloom : and the auroral light of first love is gilding his 
horizon, and the music of song is on his path ; and so he 
walks 

in glory and in joy, 5 

Behind his plough, upon the mountain side. 

We ourselves know, from the best evidence, that up to 
this date Burns was happy; nay that he was the gayest, 
brightest, most fantastic, fascinating being to be found 
in the world ; more so even than he ever afterwards 10 
appeared. But now, at this early age, he quits the pa- 
ternal roof ; goes forth into looser, louder, more exciting 
society ; and becomes initiated in those dissipations, 
those vices, which a certain class of philosophers have 
asserted to be a natural preparative for entering on active 15 
life ; a kind of mud-bath, in which the youth is, as it 
were, necessitated to steep, and, we suppose, cleanse 
himself, before the real toga of Manhood can be laid on 
him. We shall not dispute much with this class of phi- 
losophers ; we hope they are mistaken ; for Sin and Re- 20 
morse so easily beset us at all stages of life, and are 
always such indifferent company, that it seems hard we 
should, at any stage, be forced and fated not only to 
meet but to yield to them, and even serve for a term in 
their leprous armada. We hope it is not so. Clear we 25 
are, at all events, it cannot be the training one receives 
in this Devil's service, but only our determining to desert 
from it, that fits us for true manly Action. We become 
men, not after we have been dissipated, and disappointed 
in the chase of false pleasure ; but after we have ascer- 3c 
tained, in any way, what impassable barriers hem us in 
through this life ; how mad it is to hope for content- 
ment to our infinite soul from the gifts of this extremely 



44 BURNS. 

finite world ; that a man must be sufficient for himself ; 
and that for suffering and enduring there is no remedy 
but striving and doing. Manhood begins when we have 
in any way made truce with Necessity ; begins even 
5 when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part 
only do ; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when 
we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity ; and thus, in 
reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we 
are free. Surely, such lessons as this last, which, in one 

10 shape or other, is the grand lesson for every mortal man, 
are better learned from the lips of a devout mother, in 
the looks and actions of a devout father, while the heart 
is yet soft and pliant, than in collision with the sharp 
adamant of Fate, attracting us to shipwreck us, when the 

15 heart is grown hard, and may be broken before it will 
become contrite. Had Burns continued to learn this, as 
he was already learning it, in his father's cottage, he 
would have learned it fully, which he never did ; and 
been saved many a lasting aberration, many a bitter hour 

20 and year of remorseful sorrow. 

It seems to us another circumstance of fatal import in 
Burns's history, 'that at this time too he became involved 
in the religious quarrels of his district ; that he was 
enlisted and feasted, as the fighting man of the New- 

25 Light Priesthood, in their highly unprofitable warfare. 
At the tables of these free-minded clergy he learned much 
more than was needful for him. Such liberal ridicule of 
fanaticism awakened in his mind scruples about Religion 
itself ; and a whole world of Doubts, which it required 

3° quite another set of conjurors than these men to exor- 
cise. We do not say that such an intellect as his could 
have escaped similar doubts at some period of his 
history ; or even that he could, at a later period, have 
come through them altogether victorious and unharmed : 



BUXNS. 45 

but it seems peculiarly unfortunate that this time, above 
all others, should have been fixed for the encounter. 
For now, with principles assailed by evil example from 
without, by ' passions raging like demons' from within, he 
had little need of sceptical misgivings to whisper treason 5 
in the heat of the battle, or to cut of! his retreat if he 
were already defeated. He loses his feeling of inno- 
cence ; his mind is at variance with itself ; the old divinity 
no longer presides there ; but wild Desires and wild 
Repentance alternately oppress him. Ere long, too, he 10 
has committed himself before the world ; his character 
for sobriety, dear to a Scottish peasant as few corrupted 
worldlings can even conceive, is destroyed in the eyes of 
men ; and his only refuge consists in trying to disbelieve 
his guiltiness, and is but a refuge of lies. The blackest 15 
desperation now gathers over him, broken only by red 
lightnings of remorse. The whole fabric of his life is 
blasted asunder ; for now not only his character, but his 
personal liberty, is to be lost ; men and Fortune are 
leagued for his hurt ; ' hungry Ruin has him in the wind.' 20 
He sees no escape but the saddest of all : exile from his 
loved country, to a country in every sense inhospitable 
and abhorrent to him. While the ' gloomy night is 
gathering fast,' in mental storm and solitude, as well as 
in physical, he sings his wild farewell to Scotland: 25 

Farewell, my friends ; farewell, my foes ! 
My peace with these, my love with those : 
The bursting tears my heart declare ; 
Adieu, my native banks of Ayr ! 

Light breaks suddenly in on him in floods ; but still a 30 
false transitory light, and no real sunshine. He is in- 
vited to Edinburgh ; hastens thither with anticipating 
heart ; is welcomed as in a triumph, and with universal 



46 BURNS. 

blandishment and acclamation ; whatever is wisest, what- 
ever is greatest or loveliest there, gathers round him, to 
gaze on his face, to show him honour, sympathy, affection. 
Burns's appearance among the sages and nobles of 

5 Edinburgh must be regarded as one of the most singular 
phenomena in modern Literature ; almost like the 
appearance of some Napoleon among the crowned sover- 
eigns of modern Politics. For it is nowise as ' a mockery 
king,' set there by favour, transiently and for a pur- 

10 pose, that he will let himself be treated ; still less is 
he a mad Rienzi, whose sudden elevation turns his too 
weak head : but he stands there on his own basis ; cool, 
unastonished, holding his equal rank from Nature herself ; 
putting forth no claim which there is not strength in him, 

15 as well as about him, to vindicate. Mr. Lockhart has 
some forcible observations on this point : 

' It needs no effort of imagination,' says he, ' to conceive 
what the sensations of an isolated set of scholars (almost all 
either clergymen or professors) must have been in the presence 

20 of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny stranger, with his 
great flashing eyes, who, having forced his way among them 
from the plough-tail at a single stride, manifested in the whole 
strain of his bearing and conversation a most thorough con- 
viction, that in the society of the most eminent men of his 

25 nation he was exactly where he was entitled to be ; hardly 
deigned to flatter them by exhibiting even an occasional symp- 
tom of being flattered by their notice ; by turns calmly 
measured himself against the most cultivated understandings 
of his time in discussion ; overpowered the bon mots of the 

30 most celebrated convivialists by broad floods of merriment, 
impregnated with all the burning life of genius ; astounded 
bosoms habitually enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of social 
reserve, by compelling -them to tremble, — nay, to tremble 
visibly, — beneath the fearless touch of natural pathos ; and 

35 all this without indicating the smallest willingness to be ranked 



BUfiNS. 47 

among those professional ministers of excitement, who are 
content to be paid in money and smiles for doing what the 
spectators and auditors would be ashamed of doing in their 
own persons, even if they had the power of doing it ; and last, 
and probably worst of all, who was known to be in the habit 5 
of enlivening societies which they would have scorned to ap- 
proach, still more frequently than their own, with eloquence 
no less magnificent ; with wit, in all likelihood still more 
daring ; often enough, as the superiors whom he fronted with- 
out alarm might have guessed from the beginning, and had ere 10 
long no occasion to guess, with wit pointed at themselves.' 

The farther we remove from this scene, the more 
singular will it seem to us : details of the exterior aspect 
of it are already full of interest. Most readers recollect 
Mr. Walker's personal interviews with Burns as among 15 
the best passages of his Narrative : a time will come when 
this reminiscence of Sir Walter Scott's, slight though it 
is, will also be precious : 

' As for Burns,' writes Sir Walter, ' I may truly say, 
Virgilium vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen in 17S6-7, 20 
when he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling 
enough to be much interested in his poetry, and would have 
given the world to know him : but I had very little acquaint- 
ance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry of 
the west country, the two sets that he most frequented. Mr. 25 
Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He 
knew Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to din- 
ner ; but had no opportunity to keep his word ; otherwise I 
might have seen more of this distinguished man. As it was, 
I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's, 30 
where there were several gentlemen of literary, reputation, 
among whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. 
Of course, we youngsters sat silent, looked and listened. The 
only thing I remember which was remarkable in Burns's 
manner, was the effect produced upon him by a print of 35 



4S BURNS. 

Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his 
dog sitting in misery on one side, — on the other, his widow, 
with a child in her arms. These lines were written beneath : 

" Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, 
c Perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain ; 

Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, 
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, 
Gave the sad pressage of his future years, 
The child of misery baptised in tears." 

IO ' Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by the 
ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. 
He asked whose the lines were ; and it chanced that nobody 
but myself remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten 
poem of Langhorne's called by the unpromising title of " The 

15 Justice of Peace." I whispered my information to a friend 
present ; he mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me with 
a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then re- 
ceived and still recollect with very great pleasure. 

' His person was strong and robust ; his manners rustic, 

20 not clownish ; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, 
which received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge 
of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in 
Mr. Nasmyth's picture : but to me it conveys the idea that 
they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his 

25 countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the 
portraits. I should have taken the poet, had I not known what 
he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch 
school, i.e. none of your modern agriculturists -who keep 
labourers for their drudgery, but the douce i gudeman who held 

30 his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense and 
shrewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, in- 
dicated the poetical character and temperament. It was 
large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) 
when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such 

35 another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most 

1 Sedate. 



BURNS. 49 

distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed 
perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption. 
Among the men who were the most learned of their time and 
country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, but with- 
out the least intrusive forwardness ; and when he differed in 5 
opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same 
time with modesty. I do not remember any part of his con- 
versation distinctly enough to be quoted ; nor did I ever see 
him again, except in the street, where he did not recognise me, 
as I could not expect he should. He was much caressed in 10 
Edinburgh : but (considering what literary emoluments have 
been since his day) the efforts made for his relief were ex- 
tremely trifling. 

' I remember, on this occasion I mention, I thought Burns's 
acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited ; and also 15 
that, having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of 
Ferguson, he talked of them with too much humility as his 
models : there was doubtless national predilection in his esti- 
mate. 

' This is all I can tell you about Burns. I have only to add, 20 
that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was like a 
farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird. I do not 
speak in malum partem, when I say, I never saw a man in 
company with his superiors in station or information more 
perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of 25 
embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his 
address to females was extremely deferential, and always with 
a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their 
attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of 
Gordon remark this. I do not know anything I can add to 30 
these recollections of forty years since.' 

The conduct of Burns under this dazzling blaze of 
favour ; the calm, unaffected, manly manner in which he 
not only bore it, but estimated its value, has justly been 
regarded as the best proof that could be given of his real 35 
vigour and integrity of mind. A little natural vanity, 



50 BURNS. 

some touches of hypocritical modesty, some glimmerings 
of affectation, at least some fear of being thought affected, 
we could have pardoned in almost any man ; but no such 
indication is to be traced here. In his unexampled situ- 
5 ation the young peasant is not a moment perplexed ; so 
many strange lights do not confuse him, do not lead him 
astray. Nevertheless, we cannot but perceive that this 
winter did him great and lasting injury. A somewhat 
clearer knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of their char- 

ro acters, it did afford him ; but a sharper feeling of 
Fortune's unequal arrangements in their social destiny it 
also left with him. He had seen the gay and gorgeous 
arena, in which the powerful are born to play their parts ; 
nay had himself stood in the midst of it ; and he felt more 

15 bitterly than ever, that here he was but a looker-on, and 
had no part or lot in that splendid game. From this time a 
jealous indignant fear of social degradation takes posses- 
sion of him ; and perverts, so far as aught could pervert, 
his private contentment, and his feelings towards his 

20 richer fellows. It was clear to Burns that he had talent 
enough to make a fortune, or a hundred fortunes, could 
he but have rightly willed this ; it was clear also that he 
willed something far different, and therefore could not 
make one. Unhappy it was that he had not power to 

25 choose the one, and reject the other ; but must halt for- 
ever between two opinions, two objects ; making ham- 
pered advancement towards either. But so is it with 
many men : we 'long for the merchandise, yet would fain 
keep the price ; ' and so stand chaffering with Fate, in 

30 vexatious altercation, till the night come, and our fair is 
over ! 

The Edinburgh Learned of that period were in general 
more noted for clearness of head than for warmth of 
heart : with the exception of the good old Blacklock, 



BURNS. 51 

whose help was too ineffectual, scarcely one among them 
seems to have looked at Burns with any true sympathy, 
or indeed much otherwise than as at a highly curious thing. 
By the great also he is treated in the customary fashion ; 
entertained at their tables and dismissed : certain modica 5 
of pudding and praise are, from time to time, gladly ex- 
changed for the fascination of his presence ; which 
exchange once effected, the bargain is finished, and each 
party goes his several way. At the end of this strange 
season, Burns gloomily sums up his gains and losses, and 10 
meditates on the chaotic future. In money he is some- 
what richer ; in fame and the show of happiness, 
infinitely richer ; but in the substance of it, as poor as 
ever. Nay poorer ; for his heart is now maddened still 
more with the fever of worldly Ambition ; and through 15 
long years the disease will rack him with unprofitable 
sufferings, and weaken his strength for all true and 
nobler aims. 

What Burns was next to do or to avoid ; how a man so 
circumstanced was now to guide himself towards his true 20 
advantage, might at this point of time have been a ques- 
tion for the wisest. It was a question too, which appar- 
ently he was left altogether to answer for himself : of his 
learned or rich patrons it had not struck any individual 
to turn a thought on this so trivial matter. Without 25 
claiming for Burns the praise of perfect sagacity, we must 
say, that his Excise and Farm scheme does not seem to 
us a very unreasonable one ; that we should be at a loss, 
even now, to suggest one decidedly better. Certain of 
his admirers have felt scandalised at his ever resolving 30 
to gauge ; and would have had him lie at the pool, till the 
spirit of Patronage stirred the waters, that so, with one 
friendly plunge, all his sorrows might be healed. Un- 
wise counsellors ! They know not the manner of this 



52 BURNS. 

spirit ; and how, in the lap of most golden dreams, a man 
might have happiness, were it not that in the interim he 
must die of hunger ! It reflects credit on the manliness 
and sound sense of Burns, that he felt so early on what 

5 ground he was standing ; and preferred self-help, on the 
humblest scale, to dependence and inaction, though with 
hope of far more splendid possibilities. But even these 
possibilities were not rejected in his scheme : he might 
expect, if it chanced that he had any friend, to rise, in no 

10 long period, into something even like opulence and 
leisure ; while again, if it chanced that he had no friend, he 
could still live in security ; and for the rest, he ' did not 
intend to borrow honour from any profession.' We reckon 
that his plan was honest and well calculated: all turned on 

15 the execution of it. Doubtless it failed; yet not, we be- 
lieve, from any vice inherent in itself. Nay, after all, it 
was no failure of external means, but of internal, that 
overtook Burns. His was no bankruptcy of the purse, but 
of the soul ; to his last day, he owed no man anything. 

20 Meanwhile he begins well : with two good and wise 
actions. His donation to his mother, munificent from a 
man whose income had lately been seven pounds a year, 
was worthy of him, and not more than worthy. Generous 
also, and worthy of him, was the treatment of the woman 

25 whose life's welfare now depended on his pleasure. A 
friendly observer might have hoped serene days for him : 
his mind is on the true road to peace with itself : what 
clearness he still wants will be given as he proceeds ; 
for the best teacher of duties, that still lie dim to us, is 

30 the Practice of those we see and have at hand. Had the 
' patrons of genius,' who could give him nothing, but 
taken nothing from him, at least nothing more ! The 
wounds of his heart would have healed, vulgar ambition 
would have died away. Toil and Frugality would have 



BURNS. 53 

been welcome, since Virtue dwelt with them ; and Poetry 
would have shoue through them as of old : and in her 
clear ethereal light, which was his own by birthright, he 
might have looked down on his earthly destiny, and all 
its obstructions, not with patience only, but with love. 5 

But the patrons of genius would not have it so. 
Picturesque tourists, 1 all manner of fashionable danglers 
after literature, and, far worse, all manner of convivial 
Maecenases, hovered round him in his retreat ; and his 
good as well as his weak qualities secured them influence 10 
over him. He was nattered by their notice ; and his 
warm social nature made it impossible for him to shake 
them off, and hold on his way apart from them. These 
men, as we believe, were proximately the means of his 
ruin. Not that they meant him any ill ; they only meant 15 
themselves a little good ; if he suffered harm, let him look 
to it ! But they wasted his precious time and his precious 
talent; they disturbed his composure, broke down his 
returning habits of temperance and assiduous contented 
exertion. Their pampering was baneful to him; their 20 

1 There is one little sketch by certain ' English gentlemen ' of 
this class, which, though adopted in Currie's Narrative, and since 
then repeated in most others, we have all along felt an invincible 
disposition to regard as imaginary : ' On a rock that projected into 
the stream, they saw a man employed in angling, of a singular ap- 
pearance. He had a cap made of fox-skin on his head, a loose 
greatcoat fixed round him by a belt, from which depended an enor- 
mous Highland broad-sword. It was Burns.' Now, we rather 
think, it was not Burns. For, to say nothing of the fox-skin cap, 
the loose and quite Hibernian watchcoat with the belt, what are we 
to make of this ' enormous Highland broad-sword ' depending from 
him ? More especially, as there is no word of parish constables on 
the outlook to see whether, as Dennis phrases it, he had an eye to 
his own midriff or that of the public ! Burns, of all men, had the 
least need, and the least tendency, to seek for distinction, either in 
his own eyes, or those of others, by such poor mummeries. 



54 BURNS. 

cruelty, which soon followed, was equally baneful. The 
old grudge against Fortune's inequality awoke with new 
bitterness in their neighbourhood ; and Burns had no re- 
treat but to ' the Rock of Independence,' which is but an 
5 air-castle after all, that looks well at a distance, but will 
screen no one from real wind and wet. Flushed with 
irregular excitement, exasperated alternately by contempt 
of others, and contempt of himself, Burns was no longer 
regaining his peace of mind, but fast losing it forever. 

10 There was a hollowness at the heart of his life, for his 
conscience did not now approve what he was doing. 

Amid the vapours of unwise enjoyment, of bootless 
remorse, and angry discontent with Fate, his true load- 
star, a life of Poetry, with Poverty, nay with Famine if it 

15 must be so, was too often altogether hidden from his 
eyes. And yet he sailed a sea, where without some such 
loadstar there was no right steering. Meteors of French 
Politics rise before him, but these were not his stars. An 
accident this, which hastened, but did not originate, his 

20 worst distresses. In the mad contentions of that time, 
he comes in collision with certain official Superiors ; is 
wounded by them ; cruelly lacerated, we should say, 
could a dead mechanical implement, in any case, be 
called cruel: and shrinks, in indignant pain, into deeper 

25 self-seclusion, into gloomier moodiness than ever. His 
life has now lost its unity : it is a life of fragments ; led 
with little aim, beyond the melancholy one of securing its 
own continuance, — in fits of wild false joy when such 
offered, and of black despondency when they passed 

3° away. His character before the world begins to suffer : 
calumny is busy with him ; for a miserable man makes 
more enemies than friends. Some faults he has fallen 
into, and a thousand misfortunes ; but deep criminality 
is what he stands accused of, and they that are not with- 



BUKA T S. 55 

out sin cast the first stone at him ! For is he not a well- 
wisher to the French Revolution, a Jacobin, and there- 
fore in that one act guilty of all? These accusations, 
political and moral, it has since appeared, were false 
enough : but the world hesitated little to credit them. 5 
Nay his convivial Maecenases themselves were not the 
last to do it. There is reason to believe that, in his 
later years, the Dumfries Aristocracy had partly with- 
drawn themselves from Burns, as from a tainted person, 
no longer worthy of their acquaintance. That painful 10 
class, stationed, in all provincial cities, behind the out- 
most breastwork of Gentility, there to stand siege and do 
battle against the intrusions of Grocerdom and Grazier- 
dom, had actually seen dishonour in the society of Burns, 
and branded him with their veto; had, as we vulgarly 15 
say, cut him ! We find one passage in this Work of Mr. 
Lockhart's, which will not out of our thoughts : 

'A gentleman of that county, whose name I have already 
more than once had occasion to refer to, has often told me 
that he was seldom more grieved, than when riding into Dum- 20 
fries one fine summer evening about this time to attend a 
county ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the shady side of 
the principal street of the town, while the opposite side was 
gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn 
together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom 25 
appeared willing to recognise him. The horseman dismounted, 
and joined Burns, who on his proposing to cross the street 
said : " Nay, nay, my young friend, that 's all over now; " and 
quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzel Baillie's 
pathetic ballad : 30 

" His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, 
His auld ane look'd better than mony ane's new; 
But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hing, 
And casts himsell dowie 1 upon the corn-bing. 

1 Worn-out. 



56 BURNS. 

O, were we young as we ance hae been, 

We sud hae been galloping down on yon green, 

And linking 1 it ower the lily-white lea ! 

And werena my heart light, I wad die." 

5 It was little in Burns's character to let his feelings on certain 
subjects escape in this fashion. He, immediately after recit- 
ing these verses, assumed the sprightliness of his most pleasing 
manner; and taking his young friend home with him, enter- 
tained him very agreeably till the hour of the ball arrived.' 

10 Alas ! when we think that Burns now sleeps ' where 
bitter indignation can no longer lacerate his heart,' 2 and 
that most of those fair dames and frizzled gentlemen 
already lie at his side, where the breastwork of gentility 
is quite thrown down, — who would not sigh over the 

15 thin delusions and foolish toys that divide heart from 
heart, and make man unmerciful to his brother ! 

It was not now to be hoped that the genius of Burns 
would ever reach maturity, or accomplish aught worthy 
of itself. His spirit was jarred in its melody; not the 

20 soft breath of natural feeling, but the rude hand of Fate, 
was now sweeping over the strings. And yet what har- 
mony was in him, what music even in his discords ! How 
the wild tones had a charm for the simplest and the 
wisest ; and all men felt and knew that here also was one 

25 of the Gifted ! ' If he entered an inn at midnight, after 
all the inmates were in bed, the news of his arrival circu- 
lated from the cellar to the garret ; and ere ten minutes 
had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests were assem- 
bled ! ' Some brief pure moments of poetic life were yet 

30 appointed him, in the composition of his Songs. We 
can understand how he grasped at this employment ; and 
how too, he spurned all other reward for it but what the 

1 Tripping. 

2 Ubi sceva indignatio cor ulterins lacerare nequit. Swift's Epitaph. 



BURNS. 57 

labour itself brought him. For the soul of Burns, though 
scathed and marred, was yet living in its full moral 
strength, though sharply conscious of its errors and 
abasement : and here, in his destitution and degradation, 
was one act of seeming nobleness and self-devotedness 5 
left even for him to perform. He felt too, that with all 
the ' thoughtless follies' that had ' laid him low,' the world 
was unjust and cruel to him ; and he silently appealed 
to another and calmer time. Not as a hired soldier, 
but as a patriot, would he strive for the glory of his 10 
country : so he cast from him the poor sixpence a day, 
and served zealously as a volunteer. Let us not grudge 
him this last luxury of his existence ; let him not have 
appealed to us in vain ! The money was not necessary 
to him; he struggled through without it: long since, 15 
these guineas would have been gone, and now the high- 
mindedness of refusing them will plead for him in all 
hearts forever. 

We are here arrived at the crisis of Burns's life; for 
matters had now taken such a shape with him as could 20 
not long continue. If improvement was not to be looked 
for, Nature could only for a limited time maintain this 
dark and maddening warfare against the world and itself. 
We are not medically informed whether any continuance 
of years was, at this period, probable for Burns ; whether 25 
his death is to be looked on as in some sense an acciden- 
tal event, or only as the natural consequence of the long 
series of events that had preceded. The latter seems to 
be the likelier opinion ; and yet it is by no means a cer- 
tain one. At all events, as we have said, some change 30 
could not be very distant. Three gates of deliverance, 
it seems to us, were open for Burns : clear poetical 
activity ; madness ; or death. The first, with longer life, 
was still possible, though not probable ; for physical 



58 BURNS. 

causes were beginning to be concerned in it : and yet 
Burns had an iron resolution; could he but have seen 
and felt, that not only his highest glory, but his first 
duty, and the true medicine for all his woes, lay here. 

S The second was still less probable ; for his mind was 
ever among the clearest and firmest. So the milder 
third gate was opened for him: and he passed, not 
softly yet speedily, into that still country, where the 
hail-storms and fire-showers do not reach, and the heavi- 

io est-laden wayfarer at length lays down his load ! 

Contemplating this sad end of Burns, and how he 
sank unaided by any real help, uncheered by any wise 
sympathy, generous minds have sometimes figured to 
themselves, with a reproachful sorrow, that much might 

15 have been done for him; that by counsel, true affection 
and friendly ministrations, he might have been saved to 
himself and the world. We question whether there is 
not more tenderness of heart than soundness of judg- 
ment in these suggestions. It seems dubious to us 

20 whether the richest, wisest, most benevolent individual 
could have lent Burns any effectual help. Counsel, 
which seldom profits any one, he did not need ; in his 
understanding, he knew the right from the wrong, as 
well perhaps as any man ever did ; but the persuasion, 

25 which would have availed him, lies not so much in the 
head as in the heart, where no argument or expostula- 
tion could have assisted much to implant it. As to 
money again, we do not believe that this was his essen- 
tial want ; or well see how any private man could, even- 

30 presupposing Burns's consent, have bestowed on him an 
independent fortune, with much prospect of decisive 
advantage. It is a mortifying truth, that two men in 
any rank of society, could hardly be found virtuous 



BURNS. 59 

enough to give money, and to take it as a necessary 
gift, without injury to the moral entireness of one or 
both. But so stands the fact : Friendship, in the old 
heroic sense of that term, no longer exists ; except in 
the cases of kindred or other legal affinity, it is in reality 5 
no longer expected, or recognised as a virtue among 
men. A close observer of manners has pronounced 
' Patronage,' that is, pecuniary or other economic further- 
ance, to be ' twice cursed ' ; cursing him that gives, and 
him that takes ! And thus, in regard to outward matters 10 
also, it has become the rule, as in regard to inward it 
always was and must be the rule, that no one shall look 
for effectual help to another ; but that each shall rest 
contented with what help he can afford himself. Such, 
we say, is the principle of modern Honour ; naturally 15 
enough growing out of that sentiment of Pride, which we 
inculcate and encourage as the basis of our whole social 
morality. Many a poet has been poorer than Burns ; 
but no one was ever prouder : we may question whether, 
without great precautions, even a pension from Royalty 20 
would not have galled and encumbered, more than 
actually assisted him. 

Still less, therefore, are we disposed to join with another 
class of Burns's admirers, who accuse the higher ranks 
among us of having ruined Burns by their selfish neglect 25 
of him. We have already stated our doubts whether direct 
pecuniary help, had it been offered, would have been 
accepted, or could have proved very effectual. We shall 
readily admit, however, that much was to be done for 
Burns; that many a poisoned arrow might have been 30 
warded from his bosom; many an entanglement in his 
path cut asunder by the hand of the powerful ; and light 
and heat, shed on him from high places, would have 
made his humble atmosphere more genial ; and the soft- 



60 BURNS. 

est heart then breathing might have lived and died with 
some fewer pangs. Nay, we shall grant farther, and for 
Burns it is granting much, that, with all his pride, he 
would have thanked, even with exaggerated gratitude, any 
5 one who had cordially befriended him: patronage, unless 
once cursed, needed not to have been twice so. At all 
events, the poor promotion he desired in his calling might 
have been granted : it was his own scheme, therefore 
likelier than any other to be of service. All this it might 

io have been a luxury, nay it was a duty, for our nobility to 
have done. No part of all this, however, did any of them 
do; or apparently attempt, or wish to do : so much is 
granted against them. But what then is the amount of 
their blame ? Simply that they were men of the world, 

15 and walked by the principles of such men ; that they 
treated Burns, as other nobles and other commoners had 
done other poets ; as the English did Shakspeare ; as 
King Charles and his Cavaliers did Butler, as King 
Philip and his Grandees did Cervantes. Do men gather 

20 grapes of thorns ; or shall we cut down our thorns for 
yielding only a fence and haws ? How, indeed, could the 
'nobility and gentry of his native land' hold out any help 
to this ' Scottish Bard, proud of his name and country ' ? 
Were the nobility and gentry so much as able rightly 

25 to help themselves ? Had they not their game to pre- 
serve ; their borough interests to strengthen ; dinners, 
therefore, of various kinds to eat and give ? Were their 
means more than adequate to all this business, or less than 
adequate ? Less than adequate, in general ; few of them 

30 in reality were richer than Burns ; many of them were 
poorer ; for sometimes they had to wring their supplies, 
as with thumbscrews, from the hard hand ; and, in their 
need of guineas, to forget their duty of mercy ; which 
Burns was never reduced to do. Let us pity and forgive 



BURNS. 61 

them. The game they preserved and shot, the dinners 
they ate and gave, the borough interests they strengthened, 
the little Babylons they severally builded by the glory of 
their might, are all melted or melting back into the pri- 
meval Chaos, as man's merely selfish endeavours are fated 5 
to do : and here was an action, extending, in virtue of its 
worldly influence, we may say, through all time ; in virtue 
of its moral nature, beyond all time, being immortal as 
the Spirit of Goodness itself; this action was offered 
them to do, and light was not given them to do it. Let us 10 
pity and forgive them. But better than pity, let us go 
and do otherwise. Human suffering did not end with the 
life of Burns; neither was the solemn mandate, ' Love 
one another, bear one another's burdens,' given to the 
rich only, but to all men. True, we shall find no Burns 15 
to relieve, to assuage by our aid or our pity; but celestial 
natures, groaning under the fardels of a weary life, we 
shall still find ; and that wretchedness which Fate has 
rendered voiceless and tuneless is not the least wretched, 
but the most. 20 

Still, we do not think that the blame of Burns's failure 
lies chiefly with the world. The world, it seems to us, 
treated him with more rather than with less kindness than 
it usually shows to such men. It has ever, we fear, 
shown but small favour to its Teachers: hunger and 25 
nakedness, perils and revilings, the prison, the cross, the 
poison-chalice have, in most times and countries, been the 
market-price it has offered for Wisdom, the welcome with 
which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten 
and purify it. Homer and Socrates, and the Christian 30 
Apostles, belong to old days ; but the world's Martyr- 
ology was not completed with these. Roger Bacon and 
Galileo languish in priestly dungeons; Tasso pines in the 
cell of a madhouse; Camoens dies begging on the streets of 



62 BURNS. 

Lisbon. So neglected, so ' persecuted they the Prophets,' 
not in Judea only, but in all places where men have been. 
We reckon that every poet of Burns's order is, or should 
be, a prophet and teacher to his age ; that he has no 
5 right to expect great kindness from it, but rather is 
bound to do it great kindness ; that Burns, in particular, 
experienced fully the usual proportion of the world's 
goodness ; and that the blame of his failure, as we have 
said, lies not chiefly with the world. 

10 Where, then, does it lie ? We are forced to answer : 
With himself ; it is his inward, not his outward misfor- 
tunes that bring him to the dust. Seldom, indeed, is it 
otherwise; seldom is a life morally wrecked but the grand 
cause lies in some internal mal-arrangement, some want 

15 less of good fortune than of good guidance. Nature fash- 
ions no creature without implanting in it the strength 
needful for its action and duration ; least of all does she 
so neglect her masterpiece and darling, the poetic soul. 
Neither can we believe that it is in the power of any ex- 

20 ternal circumstances utterly to ruin the mind of a man ; 
nay if proper wisdom be given him, even so much as to 
affect its essential health and beauty. The sternest sum- 
total of all worldly misfortunes is Death ; nothing more 
can lie in the cup of human woe : yet many men, in all 

25 ages, have triumphed over Death, and led it captive; 
converting its physical victory into a moral victory for 
themselves, into a real and immortal consecration for all 
that their past life had achieved. What has been done, 
may be done again : nay, it is but the degree and not the 

30 kind of such heroism that differs in different seasons ; 
for without some portion of this spirit, not of boisterous 
daring, but of silent fearlessness, of Self-denial in all its 
forms, no good man, in any scene or time, has ever 
attained to be good, 



BURNS. 63 

We have already stated the error of Burns; and 
mourned over it, rather than blamed it. It was the want 
of unity in his purposes, of consistency in his aims ; the 
hapless attempt to mingle in friendly union the common 
spirit of the world with the spirit of poetry, which is of a 5 
far different and altogether irreconcilable nature. Burns 
was nothing wholly, and Burns could be nothing, no man 
formed as he was can be anything, by halves. The heart, 
not of a mere hot-blooded, popular Versemonger, or poet- 
ical Restaurateur, but of a true Poet and Singer, worthy 10 
of the old religious heroic times, had been given him: 
and he fell in an age, not of heroism and religion, but of 
scepticism, selfishness and triviality, when true Nobleness 
was little understood, and its place supplied by a hollow, 
dissocial, altogether barren and unfruitful principle of 15 
Pride. The influences of that age, his open, kind, sus- 
ceptible nature, to say nothing of his highly untoward 
situation, made it more than usually difficult for him to 
cast aside, or rightly subordinate ; the better spirit that 
was within him ever sternly demanded its rights, its 20 
supremacy : he spent his life in endeavouring to reconcile 
these two ; and lost it, as he must lose it, without recon- 
ciling them. 

Burns was born poor ; and born also to continue poor, 
for he would not endeavour to be otherwise : this it had -5 
been well could he have once for all admitted, and con- 
sidered as finally settled. He was poor, truly; but hun- 
dreds even of his own class and order of minds have been 
poorer, yet have suffered nothing deadly from it: nay, 
his own Father had a far sorer battle with ungrateful 2° 
destiny than his was ; and he did not yield to it, but died 
courageously warring, and to all moral intents prevailing, 
against it. True, Burns had little means, had even little 
time for poetry, his only real pursuit and vocation ; but 



64 BURNS. 

so much the more precious was what little he had. In all 
these external respects his case was hard ; but very far 
from the hardest. Poverty, incessant drudgery and much 
worse evils, it has often been the lot of Poets and wise 

5 men to strive with, and their glory to conquer. Locke 
was banished as a traitor ; and wrote his Essay on the 
Human Understanding sheltering himself in a Dutch gar- 
ret. Was Milton rich or at his ease when he composed 
Paradise Lost ? Not only low, but fallen from a height ; 

io not only poor, but impoverished ; in darkness and with 
dangers compassed round, he sang his immortal song, 
and found fit audience, though few. Did not Cervantes 
finish his work, a maimed soldier and in prison ? Nay, 
was not the Araucana, which Spain acknowledges as its 

15 Epic, written without even the aid of paper; on scraps 
of leather, as the stout fighter and voyager snatched any 
moment from that wild warfare ? 

And what, then, had these men, which Burns wanted? 
Two things ; both which, it seems to us, are indispen- 

20 sable for such men. They had a true, religious principle 
of morals ; and a single, not a double aim in their activity. 
They were not self-seekers and self-worshippers ; but 
seekers and worshippers of something far better than Self. 
Not personal enjoyment was their object ; but a high, 

25 heroic idea of Religion, of Patriotism, of heavenly Wis- 
dom, in one or the other form, ever hovered before them ; 
in which cause they neither shrank from suffering, nor 
called on the earth to witness it as something wonderful; 
but patiently endured, counting it blessedness enough so 

30 to spend and be spent. Thus the * golden-calf of Self- 
love,' however curiously carved, was not their Deity; 
but the Invisible Goodness, which alone is man's reason- 
able service. This feeling was as a celestial fountain, 
whose streams refreshed into gladness and beauty all the 



BURNS. 65 

provinces of their otherwise too desolate existence. In a 
word, they willed one thing, to which all other things 
were subordinated and made subservient ; and therefore 
they accomplished it. The wedge will rend rocks; but 
its edge must be sharp and single : if it be double, the 5 
wedge is bruised in pieces and will rend nothing. 

Part of this superiority these men owed to their age ; in 
which heroism and devotedness were still practised, or at 
least not yet disbelieved in : but much of it likewise they 
owed to themselves. With Burns, again, it was different. 10 
His morality,in most of its practical points, is that of a mere 
worldly man; enjoyment, in a finer or coarser shape, is 
the only thing he longs and strives for. A noble instinct 
sometimes raises him above this ; but an instinct only, 
and acting only for moments. He has no Religion ; in 15 
the shallow age, where his days were cast, Religion was 
not discriminated from the New and Old Light forms of 
Religion ; and was, with these, becoming obsolete in the 
minds of men. His heart, indeed, is alive with a trem- 
bling adoration, but there is no temple in his understand- 20 
ing. He lives in darkness and in the shadow of doubt. 
His religion, at best, is an anxious wish; like that of 
Rabelais, ' a great Perhaps.' 

He loved Poetry warmly, and in his heart ; could he 
but have loved it purely, and with his whole undivided 25 
heart, it had been well. For Poetry, as Burns could have 
followed it, is but another form of Wisdom, of Religion; 
is itself Wisdom and Religion. But this also was denied 
him. His poetry is a stray vagrant gleam, which will not 
be extinguished within him, yet rises not to be the true 30 
light of his path, but is often a wildfire that misleads him. 
It was not necessary for Burns to be rich, to be, or to 
seem, ' independent ' ; but it zaas necessary for him to be 
at one with his own heart; to place what was highest in his 



66 BURNS. 

nature highest also in his life ; ' to seek within himself for 
that consistency and sequence, which external events would 
forever refuse him.' He was born a poet ; poetry was 
the celestial element of his being, and should have been 
5 the soul of his whole endeavours. Lifted into that serene 
ether, whither he had wings given him to mount, he 
would have needed no other elevation : poverty, neglect 
and all evil, save the desecration of himself and his Art, 
were a small matter to him ; the pride and the passions 

ro of the world lay far beneath his feet; and he looked down 
alike on noble and slave, on prince and beggar, and all 
that wore the stamp of man, with clear recognition, with 
brotherly affection, with sympathy, with pity. Nay, we 
question whether for his culture as a Poet poverty and 

15 much suffering for a season were not absolutely advan- 
tageous. Great men, in looking back over their lives, 
have testified to that effect. ' I would not for much,' says 
Jean Paul, 'that I had been born richer.' And yet Paul's 
birth was poor enough; for, in another place, he adds: 

20 ' The prisoner's allowance is bread and water; and I had 
often only the latter.' But the gold that is refined in the 
hottest furnace comes out the purest ; or, as he has himself 
expressed it, ' the canary-bird sings sweeter the longer it 
has been trained in a darkened cage.' 

25 A man like Burns might have divided his hours be- 
tween poetry and virtuous industry ; industry which all 
true feeling sanctions, nay prescribes, and which has 
a beauty, for that cause, beyond the pomp of thrones: 
but to divide his hours between poetry and rich men's 

30 banquets was an ill-starred and inauspicious attempt. 
How could he be at ease at such banquets ? What had 
he to do there, mingling his music with the coarse roar of 
altogether earthly voices ; brightening the thick smoke of 
intoxication with fire lent him from heaven? Was it his 



BURNS. 67 

aim to enjoy life ? Tomorrow he must go drudge as an 
Exciseman ! We wonder not that Burns became moody, 
indignant, and at times an offender against certain rules 
of society ; but rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, 
and ran amuck against them all. How could a man, so 5 
falsely placed by his own or others' fault, ever know con- 
tentment or peaceable diligence for an hour ? What he 
did, under such perverse guidance, and what he forbore 
to do, alike fill us with astonishment at the natural 
strength and worth of his character. ic 

Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness; 
but not in others; only in himself; least of all in simple 
increase of wealth and worldly ' respectability.' We hope 
we have now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth 
for poetry, and to make poets happy. Nay have we not 15 
seen another instance of it in these very days ? Byron, a 
man of an endowment considerably less ethereal than that 
of Burns, is born in the rank not of a Scottish ploughman, 
but of an English peer: the highest worldly honours, the 
fairest worldly career, are his by inheritance; the richest 20 
harvest of fame he soon reaps, in another province, by 
his own hand. And what does all this avail him? Is he 
happy, is he good, is he true ? Alas, he has a poet's soul, 
and strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal; and soon 
feels that all this is but mounting to the house-top to 25 
reach the stars ! Like Burns, he is only a proud man ; 
might, like him, have ' purchased a pocket-copy of Milton 
to study the character of Satan'; for Satan also is Byron's 
grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model 
apparently of his conduct. As in Bur'ns's case too, the 3° 
celestial element will not mingle with the clay of earth; 
both poet and man of the world he must not be; vulgar 
Ambition will not live kindly with poetic Adoration; he 
cannot serve God and Mammon. Byron, like Burns, is 



68 BURNS. 

not happy; nay he is the most wretched of all men. His 
life is falsely arranged: the fire that is in him is not a 
strong, still, central fire, warming into beauty the products 
of a world; but it is the mad fire of a volcano; and now 
5 — we look sadly into the ashes of a crater, which ere long 
will fill itself with snow ! 

Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to 
their generation, to teach it a higher Doctrine, a purer 
Truth; they had a message to deliver, which left them no 

io rest till it was accomplished; in dim throes of pain, this 
divine behest lay smouldering within them; for they knew 
not what it meant, and felt it only in mysterious anticipa- 
tion, and they had to die without articulately uttering it. 
They are in the camp of the Unconverted; yet not as high 

15 messengers of rigorous though benignant truth, but as 
soft flattering singers, and in pleasant fellowship will they 
live there: they are first adulated, then persecuted; they 
accomplish little for others; they find no peace for them- 
selves, but only death and the peace of the grave. We 

20 confess, it is not without a certain mournful awe that we 
view the fate of these noble souls, so richly gifted, yet 
ruined to so little purpose with all their gifts. It seems 
to us there is a stern moral taught in this piece of history, 
— twice told us in our own time ! Surely to men of like 

25 genius, if there be any such, it carries with it a lesson of 
deep impressive significance. Surely it would become 
such a man, furnished for the highest of all enterprises, 
that of being the Poet of his Age, to consider well what 
it is that he attempts, and in what spirit he attempts it. 

30 For the words of Milton are true in all times, and were 
never truer than in this: 'He who would write heroic 
poems must make his whole life a heroic poem.' If he 
cannot first so make his life, then let him hasten from 
this arena; for neither its lofty glories, nor its fearful 



BURNS. 69 

perils, are fit for him. Let him dwindle into a modish 
balladmonger; let him worship and besing the idols of 
the time, and the time will not fail to reward him. If, 
indeed, he can endure to live in that capacity ! Byron 
and Burns could not live as idol-priests, but the fire of 5 
their own hearts consumed them; and better it was for 
them that they could not. For it is not in the favour of 
the great or of the small, but in a life of truth, and in the 
inexpugnable citadel of his own soul, that a Byron's or a 
Burns's strength must lie. Let the great stand aloof from 10 
him, or know how to reverence him. Beautiful is the 
union of wealth with favour and furtherance for litera- 
ture; like the costliest flower-jar enclosing the loveliest 
amaranth. Yet let not the relation be mistaken. A true 
poet is not one whom they can hire by money or flattery to 15 
be a minister of their pleasures, their writer of occasional 
verses, their purveyor of table-wit ; he cannot be their men- 
ial, he cannot even be their partisan. At the peril of both 
parties, let no such union be attempted ! Will a Courser 
of the Sun work softly in the harness of a Dray-horse? 20 
His hoofs are of fire, and his path is through the heavens, 
bringing light to all lands; will he lumber on mud high- 
ways, dragging ale for earthly appetites from door to door? 
But we must stop short in these considerations, which 
would lead us to boundless lengths. We had something 25 
to say on the public moral character of Burns; but this 
also we must forbear. We are far from regarding him as 
guilty before the world, as guiltier than the average ; nay 
from doubting that he is less guilty than one of ten thou- 
sand. Tried at a tribunal far more rigid than that where 30 
the Plebiscita of common civic reputations are pronounced, 
he has seemed to us even there less worthy of blame than 
of pity and wonder. But the world is habitually unjust 
in its judgments of such men; unjust on many grounds, 



70 BURNS. 

of which this one may be stated as the substance: It 
decides, like a court of law, by dead statutes; and not 
positively but negatively, less on what is done right, than 
on what is or is not done wrong. Not the few inches of 
5 deflection from the mathematical orbit, which are so easily 
measured, but the ratio of these to the whole diameter, 
constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a 
planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar system ; or 
it may be a city hippodrome; nay the circle of a ginhorse, 

10 its diameter a score of feet or paces. But the inches of 
deflection only are measured: and it is assumed that the 
diameter of the ginhorse, and that of the planet, will yield 
the same ratio when compared with them ! Here lies the 
root of many a blind, cruel condemnation of Burnses, 

15 Swifts, Rousseaus, which one never listens to with ap- 
proval. Granted, the ship comes into harbour with shrouds 
and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not 
been all-wise and all-powerful : but to know how blame- 
worthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round 

20 the Globe, or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs. 

With our readers in general, with men of right feeling 
anywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. In 
pitying admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in 
a far nobler mausoleum than that one of marble ; neither 

25 will his Works, even as they are, pass away from the 
memory of men. While the Shakspeares and Miltons 
roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, 
bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on 
their waves ; this little Valclusa Fountain will also arrest 

30 our eye : for this also is of Nature's own and most cun- 
ning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the earth, 
with a full gushing current, into the light of day; and 
often will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear 
waters, and muse among its rocks and pines ! 



NOTES. 



1 2. Butler. Are there not good reasons why the author of Hudi- 
bras should not have expected to be a general favorite ? 

1 15. brave mausoleum. At Dumfries, where Burns spent the last 
five years of his life. In it were buried the poet, his wife and children. 

In 1820 the foundation stone was laid for the monument on Alloway 
Croft, near the Auld Brig of Doon. ^"3300 was subscribed for this 
purpose. 

Eleven years later work began on the Edinburgh monument, which 
cost even more. 

There are statues of Burns in Glasgow, Kilmarnock, New York, 
Dundee, Dumfries, London, Albany (N.Y.), Ayr, Aberdeen, Irvine, 
Paisley, Chicago, and other places. 

2 12. Lucy's. It was in Lucy's park, says tradition, that Shakspere 
did his deer-stealing. On evidence of equal value is based the legend 
which names him as the author of a doggerel epitaph on John a. Combe. 

2 22. Excise Commissioners. Cf. p. 10, 11. 27-30. 

2 22. Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt. A company of Scottish 
noblemen and gentry interested in field sports. They allowed Burns to 
dedicate to them the second edition of his poems, and subscribed indi- 
vidually for copies. Directly and indirectly, the members of this 
aristocratic association were very helpful to the young poet. 

2 23. Dumfries Aristocracy. Dumfries, " a great stage on the road 
from England to Ireland," was a small provincial town notable for its 
public entertainments. The Caledonian Hunt sometimes met there ; 
the country gentlemen often. Parties of strangers would send for 
Burns, "the standing marvel of the place," and he weakly went to 
amuse them with his jokes, toasts, and songs. 

2 25. New and Old Light Clergy. The New Lights were more lib- 
eral, more progressive than the Old Lights. The two factions of the 
Church were at sword's points. Burns naturally sympathized with the 
New Lights. 



72 NOTES. 

4 3. Constable's Miscellany. Constable was a well-known Edin- 
burgh publisher. Lockharfs Life came out in April, 1828. The whole 
impression was exhausted in six weeks. Before the end of the year 
Carlyle's review of Lockhart's volume had " raised the enthusiasm of 
the world on the subject." 

4 13. Mr. Morris Birkbeck, author of Notes on a Journey in America, 
from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois, 2d ed., London, 
1818. 

6 10. An educated man. Contrast with this short life Milton's 
period of preparation for writing. It has been said that the noble mind 
needs abundant leisure. 

6 26. Condition the most disadvantageous. Cf. p. 66, 11. 13 ff. 
" Nay, we question whether for his culture as a Poet poverty and much 
suffering for a season were not absolutely advantageous," etc. 

6 31. Ferguson or Ramsay. Ramsay, who died about a year before 
Burns was born, has been called the most famous Scottish poet of the 
period. The Gentle Shepherd was a classic to the people. Burns, 
in writing of " the excellent Ramsay and the still more excellent Fer- 
guson," shows better judgment than most of the critics, according to 
Professor Hugh Walker and Mr. Wallace. These Scottish poets and 
their followers broke away from the traditions of the ' correct ' poets and 
practiced " much of what is best in Wordsworth's doctrine of poetic 
diction and of the proper subjects for poetic treatment." 

Burns imitated Ferguson oftener than any other poet. Burns never 
forgot his obligations to Ferguson. He writes : " Rhyme I had given 
up [on going to Irvine], but, meeting with Ferguson's Scottish Poems, 
I strung anew my wildly sounding lyre with emulating vigour." And 
in raising a simple monument to the memory of Ferguson, he honored 
what was probably up to this point " the best expression of the spirit 
which animated himself." 

7 25. Criticism ... a cold business. The world still needs sym- 
pathetic critics. Cf. Dr. Henry Van Dyke's The Poetry of Tennyson, 
a fine specimen of literary appreciation. Cf. also Matthew Arnold's 
theory of criticism. 

10 25. JEolian harp. Ruskin says he knows no poetry so sorrow- 
ful as Scott's. " Scott is inherently and consistently sad. Around all 
his power and brightness and enjoyment of eye and heart, the far-away 
^Eolian knell is forever sounding." 

10 30. gauging ale barrels ! " The excise scheme was a pet one 
of the bard's own, and consideration of that fact ought to have checked 
the indignant utterances of Carlyle and others of smaller note who 



NOTES. .73 

declaimed against his friendly patrons for finding no better post for him 
than ' a Gaugership.'" — W. S. Douglas. 
12 18. Si vis me flere. 

Si vis me flere, dolendum est 
primum ipsi tibi. 

— Horace: De Arte Poetica Liber, 11. 102, 103. 

" If you would have me weep, you yourself must first know sorrow." 

15 21. Mrs. Dunlop. During a period of depression Mrs. Dunlop, 
a wealthy woman of high rank, happened to read The Cotter's Saticrday 
Night. The faithful, simple description charmed her back to her nor- 
mal condition. Her interest in this poem was the beginning of a cor- 
respondence that lasted as long as Burns lived. Of all his friendships, 
says Gilbert Burns, " none seemed more agreeable to him than that of 
Mrs. Dunlop." Naturally enough, letters written to such a friend 
furnish very interesting material for the poet's biography. 

17 17. a vates. The function of "legislators, prophets, philoso- 
phers, poets ... is always the same, to call back to nature and truth 
the spoiled children of convention and affectation. Of these messen- 
gers, the most wide in his range, and most generally accepted, is the 
poet ; for, while the legislator is often cramped by the hardness of the 
materials with which he has to deal, and the prophet too often has his 
influence confined and bound by the very forms of a church which owed 
its existence, perhaps, to his catholicity, the great poet in his honest 
utterances is hampered by no forces external to his own genius. 

" The works of such great poets — for we do not speak here of mere 
dressers of pretty fancies — are a real evangel of Nature to all people 
who have ears to hear. Such men were Homer and Pindar to the 
Greeks ; Horace and Virgil to the Romans ; to the English, Shakspere 
and Wordsworth ; to Scotland, Walter Scott and Robert Burns." — 
Blackie. 

17 24. Minerva Press. A London press, noted in the eighteenth 
century for turning out sentimental novels. 

18 14. Borgia. Although Macchiavelli in his " Principe " represents 
this skillful politician as a model ruler, the name still stands for cruelty 
and treachery. 

18 17. Mossgiel and Tarbolton. See Outline of 'the Life of Burns. 
18 19. Crockford's. A famous gaming club-house in London. 
20 15. Retzsch. A German etcher and painter, famous for his etch- 
ings illustrating works of Goethe, Schiller, and Shakspere. 



74 NOTES. 

22 11 Clearness of Sight. Ruskin says : "The greatest thing a 
human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it 
saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, 
but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, 
prophecy, and religion, — all in one." 

" The world of Literature is more or less divided into Thinkers and 
Seers. ... I believe . . . the Seers are wholly the greater race of the 
two." 

" A true Thinker, who has practical purpose in his thinking, and is 
sincere, as Plato or Carlyle or Helps, becomes in some sort a seer, and 
must be always of infinite use in his generation." — Ruskin on Scott, 
Modem Painters, vol. Ill, part iv, " Of Many Things." 

23 6. red-wat-shod. Wat means wet. 

23 23. Keats. Is Carlyle's criticism of Keats appreciative ? 

24 3. Novum Organum. One of Bacon's scientific works. Macau- 
lay says : "The A T ovum Organum and the De Augmentis are much 
talked of, but little read. They have produced, indeed, a vast effect on 
the opinions of mankind ; but they have produced it through the opera- 
tion of intermediate agents. They have moved the intellects which 
have moved the world." 

27 12. Dr. Slop. Carlyle quotes from Sterne's Tristram Shandy, 
a book which Burns " devoured at meals, spoon in hand." 

28 20. Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled. Mr. Quiller Couch says 
that Bannockbttrn seems to him to be rant ; " very fine rant — inspired 
rant, if you will — hovering on the borders of poetry." 

Mr. Wallace says : " Under cover of a fourteenth century battle-song 
he [Burns] was really liberating his soul against the Tory tyranny that 
was opposing liberty at home and abroad, and, moreover, striking at the 
comfort of his own fireside." 

29 5. Cacus. A giant. 

31 l. Tieck . . . Musaus. Each of these Germans wrote Ger- 
man folk tales. The chief note of those of Musaus is said to be their 
artificial naivete. Yet the " satirical humour, quaint fancy, and grace- 
ful writing " have made them a classic of their kind. 

31 16. Tarn o' Shanter. Both Lockhart and Cunningham give 
some account of the day on which Burns wrote the poem which he con- 
sidered his masterpiece. Principal Shairp also tells the story in his 
Robert B terns, p. 1 2 1 . 

Scott had Tarn o" 1 Shanter in mind when he said that " no poet, with 
the exception of Shakspere, ever possessed the power of exciting the 
most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions." 



NOTES. 75 



11 -,4 'POOSie Nansie.' It was in her alehouse that the ranch 

JLV™" "U-" ^ < he *•*""• and the others 

^Z *twJ%«*- A" eighteenth-century production by John 
Gav He transforms a motley company of highwaymen, prckpoeke s, 
^'into agroup of fine gentlemen and ladies in order to satinze the 

TSt:r rrel'nt^nry work hy John Fletcher and 

° tl T^ his Songs. Emerson said the reason why the great English 
race i ov The world, honored the poet as it did on the hundredth 
Adversary of his birth was becanse "Robert Burns, the poet of the 
middle dais represents in the mind of men to-day that great upnsmg 
"/the S to cLs against the armed and privileged rmnonUes, that 
uprising which worked politically in the American and h reach Revoh, 
71, and which, not in governments so rnuch as - «££ 

Tl^l^tltZ l^IInce/the Erench Rights of 
Ma^nd the 'Marseillaise' are not more weighty documents m the h,, 
torv of freedom than the songs of Burns." 

33 L Ossorius (Osorio). Bacon comments on the tendency of 
this man "sacrifice substance to style. A philosoptocal wnter, h,s 
chief work is a Latin history of the reign of Emanuel I. 

3+ „ our Fletcher's aphorism. Andrew Fletcher, a famous Scot- 
tish pa^ For a short 'account of the man, and an exact quotation 
of the saying that has made him famous, see Chambers, Encyclo 

1ST.I Grays and Glovers. Why does Carlyle mention Glover in 
connection Wh Gray > Stopford Brooke says, " The ■ Elegy wd a way 
remain one of the beloved poems of Englishmen. It . no. only a 
niece of exauisite work ; it is steeped in England. 

P 36 Boston (Thomas). Carlyle mentions the best-known , w h 
of this Scotch Presbyterian divine. His influence as a CaWm str 
theologian is said to have affected several generates of Scott* 

Pe 36 le 29 . La Ftoche. A town in France where the famous Scottish 
philosopher and historian, David Hume, spent three yea.s. He de 
scribes himself as wandering about there « in solitude, and dreamrng the 
dream of his philosophy." . 

41 4. Mossgiel. The town in which Burns drd most of h,s best 



work. 



76 NOTES. 

45 11. character for sobriety . . . destroyed. Burns was then living 
at Mossgiel. During these years, his brother Gilbert says, "his temper- 
ance and frugality were everything that could be desired." Mr. Scott 
Douglas adds: "The effect of prevalent misconception on this point 
is visible, even in Mr. Carlyle's in many respects incomparable essay. 
The poet had at Kirkoswald and Irvine learned to drink, and he was 
all his life liable to social excesses, but it is unfair to say that his ' char- 
acter for sobriety was destroyed.' " 

46 11. a mad Rienzi. A Roman political reformer of the fourteenth 
century. "The nobles never acknowledged his government . . . and 
the populace became so infuriated by his arbitrary measures that a 
crowd surrounded him on the stairs of the Capitol and killed him." 

47 20. Virgilium vidi tantum. I have caught a glimpse of Virgil. 

48 23. Mr. Nasmyth's picture. See Life and Works of Robert 
Burns by Dr. Robert Chambers, 1896 edition, by William Wallace, vol. 
II, p. 55, for an engraving from this portrait. 

49 23. in malem partem, disparagingly. 

50 34. good Old Blacklock. Burns says : " Dr. Blacklock belonged 
to a set of critics for whose applause I had not dared to hope" Dr. 
Thomas Blacklock, of Edinburgh, was a blind poet, of whom Dr. John- 
son wrote that he "looked on him with reverence." [Letter to Mrs. 
Thrale, Edinburgh, August 17, 1773.] Upon hearing Burns's poems 
read he wrote an appreciative letter to their common friend Dr. Law- 
rie, urging that a second edition be printed at once. Burns says : " Dr. 
Blacklock's idea that I should meet every encouragement for a second 
edition fired me so much that away I posted to Edinburgh." 

51 27. Excise and Farm scheme. Burns felt compelled to under- 
take the excise work in order to eke out the scanty income his farm 
yielded. 

52 5. preferred self help. " Burns, however, asked nothing from 
his Edinburgh friends ; when they helped him to a farm and a position 
in the Excise, believing, as they apparently did, that they were thereby 
gratifying his own wishes, he made no complaint, but cheerfully pre- 
pared himself for the necessarily uncongenial career which alone 
appeared open to him." — William Wallace's Life. 

53 9. Maecenas. The friend and patron of Horace and Virgil. 

54 21. collision with . . . Superiors. Burns writes: "I have been 
surprised, confounded, and distracted by Mr. Mitchell, the Collector, 
telling me that he has received an order from your Board [the Scottish 
Board of Excise] to inquire into my political conduct, and blaming me 
as a person disaffected to Government." But it seems clear that he was 



NOTES. 77 

not very severely reprimanded at headquarters, because later in this 
same year the official record is, " The Poet ; does pretty well." 

Cf. "The Deil's Awa Wi' Th' Exciseman," and the story of the cir- 
cumstances under which it was written. 

55 8. Dumfries Aristocracy. " If there is any truth in the story, 
on which so much false sentiment has been wasted, about Burns walk- 
ing the shady side of the street while the Dumfries gentry on the other 
side would not recognise him, it proves at all events that Burns knew 
no reason why he should not show himself on the street as well as the 
proudest among them." — Wallace. 

In January, 1794, "about the time usually selected for his final sur- 
render to the drink-fiend," Burns wrote: ' Some . . . have conceived a 
prejudice against me as being a drunken, dissipated character. I might 
be all this, you know, and yet be an honest fellow ; but you know that 
I am an honest fellow and am nothing of this.' 

57 12. a volunteer. In 1795, while a large part of the regular army 
was fighting against France abroad, Dumfries raised two companies of 
volunteers. Among the liberals, against whom severe accusations had 
been made, and who welcomed this opportunity to show their loyalty, 
was Burns. Cunningham says he well remembers the swarthy, stooping 
ploughman handling his arms with " indifferent dexterity " in this 
respectable and picturesque corps. As a further indication of the poet's 
feeling he wrote The Dumfries Volunteers, a ballad that first appeared 
in the Dumfries Journal and was at once reprinted in other newspapers 
and magazines. 

60 7. promotion. To escape the "incessant drudgery" of the 
Supervisorship, Burns wanted to be the Excise Collector. He thought 
this position would give him " a decent competence " and " a life of 
literary leisure." He would ask for nothing more. 

Butler. Cf. p. 1. 

61 32. Roger Bacon. His Op?cs Majus (" Greater Work ") is, to 
borrow 7 the phrase of Dr. Whewell, " at once the Encyclopcedia and the 
Novum Organum. of the thirteenth century." " ' Unheard, forgotten, 
buried,' the old man died as he had lived, and it has been reserved for 
later ages to roll away the obscurity that had gathered round his mem- 
ory, and to place first in the great roll of modern science the name of 
Roger Bacon." — J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, p. 
141. See Novum Organum, p. 24 of this essay, and the note. 

61 33. Tasso pines in the cell of a madhouse. During these seven 
years of confinement his greatest work was read all over Europe. It is 
said that he is the last Italian poet whose influence made itself felt 



78 NOTES. 

throughout Europe, and that his Jerusalem is the "culminating poetical 
product " of the sixteenth century, as Dante's Divine Comedy is of the 
fourteenth. 

61 34. Camoens. A celebrated Portuguese poet of the sixteenth 
century. 

64 14. Araucana. By Alonso de Ercilla. 

65 15. He has no Religion. Carlyle did a great deal of vigorous 
thinking on the subject of religion. "'A man's religion," he says, "is 
the chief fact with regard to him. . . . The thing a man does practi- 
cally believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to him- 
self, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, 
and know for certain concerning his vital relations to this mysterious 
Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary 
thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his 
religion ; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and no-religion." Again 
Carlyle says of the man who has a religion : " Hourly and daily, for 
himself and for the whole world, a faithful, unspoken, but not ineffec- 
tual prayer rises : ' Thy will be done.' His whole work on earth is an 
emblematic spoken or acted prayer : ' Be the will of God done on Earth 
— not the Devil's will or any of the Devil's servants' wills! ' . . . He 
has a religion, this man ; an everlasting Load-star that beams the 
brighter in the Heavens, the darker here on Earth grows the night 
around him." 

These citations may help us decide what Carlyle meant by saying 
that Burns had no religion. We are glad to have him add : " His 
religion, at best, is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais, ' a great Per- 
haps.' " Some of us may agree with Professor Hugh Walker that there 
is only a half-truth in this concession, and that " Carlyle, in most respects 
so appreciative and so keen-sighted, is surely in error when he says that 
Burns had no religion." We can hardly escape the conclusion that 
Burns was at times strongly influenced by his religious hope. There are 
passages in several of his poems that we must not disregard; and in his 
letters he sometimes throws light on his religious views. For example, 
in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, 1788, he writes : " Some things in your late 
letters hurt me; not that you say them, but that you mistake me. 
Religion, my honored madam, has not only been all my life my chief 
dependence, but my dearest enjoyment. I have indeed been the 
luckless victim of wayward follies ; but, alas ! I have ever been ' more 
fool than knave.' A mathematician without religion is a probable 
character; an irreligious poet is a monster." Some two years earlier 
he had written: " O, thou great unknown Power! Thou Almighty 



NOTES. 79 

God ! who hast lighted up reason in my breast, and blessed me with 
immortality ! I have frequently wandered from that order and regu- 
larity necessary for the perfection of thy works, yet thou hast never left 
me nor forsaken me ! " 

70 20. Ramsgate. A seaport in Kent, sixty-five miles from London. 

70 20. Isle of Dogs. A peninsula on the bank of the Thames, 
opposite Greenwich. 

70 29. Valclusa. Valcluse, near Avignon, was the quiet country 
home of 

" Fraunceys Petrark, . . . whose rethorike sw T ete 
Enlumined al Itaille of poetrye." 



CARLYLE'S SUMMARY. 



Our grand maxim of supply and demand. Living misery and post- 
humous glory. The character of Burns a theme that cannot easily 
become exhausted. His Biographers. Perfection in Biography. — Burns 
one of the most considerable British men of the eighteenth century : 
an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen. His hard and most dis- 
advantageous conditions. Not merely as a Poet, but as a Man, that he 
chiefly interests and affects us. His life a deeper tragedy than any 
brawling Napoleon's. His heart, erring and at length broken, full of 
inborn riches, of love to all living and lifeless things. The Peasant 
Poet bears himself among the low, with whom his lot is cast, like a 
King in exile. — His Writings but a poor mutilated fraction of what was 
in him, yet of a quality enduring as the English tongue. He wrote, 
not from hearsay, but from sight and actual experience. This, easy as 
it looks, the fundamental difficulty which all poets have to strive with. 
Byron, heartily as he detested insincerity, far enough from faultless. 
No poet of Burns's susceptibility from first to last so totally free from 
affectation. Some of his Letters, however, by no means deserve this 
praise. His singular power of making all subjects, even the most 
homely, interesting. Wherever there is a sky above him, and a world 
around him, the poet is in his place. Every genius an impossibility 
till he appears. — Burns's rugged earnest truth, yet tenderness and sweet 
native grace. His clear, graphic ' descriptive touches ' and piercing 
emphasis of thought. Professor Stewart's testimony to Burns's intel- 
lectual vigour. A deeper insight than any 'doctrine of association.' 
In the Poetry of Burns keenness of insight keeps pace with keenness of 
feeling. Loving Indignation and good Hatred : Scots wha hae ; Mac- 
phersorCs Farewell: Sunny buoyant floods of Humour. — Imperfections 
of Burns's poetry : Tarn o' Shanter, not a true poem so much as a piece 
of sparkling rhetoric : The folly Beggars, the most complete and perfect 
as a poetical composition. His Songs the most truly inspired and most 
deeply felt of all his poems. His influence on the hearts and literature 
of his country : Literary patriotism. — Burns's acted Works even more 
interesting than his written ones ; and these too, alas, but a fragment : 



SUMMAR Y. 81 

His passionate youth never passed into clear and steadfast manhood. 
The only true happiness of a man : Often it is the greatest minds that 
are latest in obtaining it : Burns and Byron. Burns's hard-worked, 
yet happy boyhood : His estimable parents. Early dissipations. In 
Necessity and Obedience a man should find his highest Freedom. — 
Religious quarrels and scepticisms. Faithlessness : Exile and black- 
est desperation. Invited to Edinburgh : A Napoleon among the 
crowned sovereigns of Literature. Sir Walter Scott's reminiscence of 
an interview with Burns. Burns's calm, manly bearing amongst the 
Edinburgh aristocracy. His bitter feeling of his own indigence. By 
the great he is treated in the customary fashion ; and each party goes 
his several way. — What Burns was next to do, or to avoid : His Excise^ 
and-Farm scheme not an unreasonable one: No failure of external 
means, but of internal, that overtook Burns. Good beginnings. Patrons 
of genius and picturesque tourists : Their moral rottenness, by which 
he became infected, gradually eat out the heart of his life. Meteors of 
French Politics rise before him, but they are not his stars. Calumny 
is busy with him. The little great-folk of Dumfries: Burns's desola- 
tion. In his destitution and degradation one act of self-devotedness 
still open to him : Not as a hired soldier, but as a patriot, would he 
strive for the glory of his country. The crisis of his life: Death.— 
Little effectual help could perhaps have been rendered to Burns : Pat- 
ronage twice cursed : Many a poet has been poorer, none prouder. And 
yet much might have been done to have made his humble atmosphere 
more genial. Little Babylons and Babylonians : Let us go and do 
otherwise. The market-price of Wisdom. Not in the power of any 
mere external circumstances to ruin the mind of a man. The errors of 
Burns to be mourned over, rather than blamed. The great want of his 
life was the great want of his age, a true faith in Religion and a single- 
ness and unselfishness of aim. — Poetry, as Burns could and ought to 
have followed it, is but another form of Wisdom, of Religion. For his 
culture as a Poet, poverty and much suffering for a season were abso- 
lutely advantageous. To divide his hours between poetry and rich men's 
banquets an ill-starred attempt. Byron, rich in worldly means and 
honours, no whit happier than Burns in his poverty and worldly degra- 
dation : They had a message from on High to deliver, which could 
leave them no rest while it remained unaccomplished. Death and the 
rest of the grave : A stern moral, twice told us in our own time. The 
world habitually unjust in its judgments of such men. With men of 
right feeling anywhere, there will be no need to plead for Burns : In 
pitying admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts. 



REFERENCE BOOKS. 



BURNS. 

Arnold, Matthew. The Study of Poetry. (Essays in Criticism.) 

Blackie, J. S. Life of Burns. (Great Writers.) 

Blackie, J. S. Scottish Song. 

Brooke, Stopford. Theology in the English Poets. 

Bruce, Wallace. The Land of Burns. 

Carlyle, Thomas. Hero as Poet, and Hero as Man of Letters. 

Cuthbertson, John. Complete Glossary to the Poetry and Prose of 

Robert Burns. 
Douglas, W. S. Works of Robert Burns, Paterson edition, 6 vols. 

(with a Summary of his Career and Genius). 
Dow, J. G. Selections from Burns. (Introduction, notes, and glossary.) 
Ferguson, R. Poems. 
George, A. J. Select Poems of Burns (arranged chronologically, with 

notes). 
Giles, H. Illustrations of Genius. 
Graham, P. Anderson. Nature in Books. (The Poetry of Toil — 

Burns.) 
Haliburton, Hugh. Furth in Field. 
Henley, W. E., and Henderson, T. F. The Poetry of Robert Burns. 

Centenary edition. 3 vols., with notes. Reprinted, 1 vol., in " The 

Cambridge Edition." 
Kingsley, Charles. Burns and His School. 
Nichol, John. Burns. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.) 
Ramsay, A. Poems. 
Reid, J. B. Complete Concordance to the Poems and Songs of 

Robert Burns. 
Robertson, L. Selections from Burns. (Notes and glossary.) 
Ross, J. D. Round Burns' Grave : Paeans and Dirges of Many Bards 

(including Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Lowell, and Wordsworth). 

82 



REFERENCE BOOKS. 



83 



Ross, J. D. Burnsiana. 

Setoun, Gabriel. Robert Burns. (Famous Scots Series.) 

Shairp, J. C. Robert Burns. (English Men of Letters.) 

Shairp, J. C. Scottish Song and Burns. 

Stoddard, R. H. Literary Landmarks of Edinburgh. 

Walker, H. Three Centuries of Scottish Songs. 

Wallace, William. The Life and Works of Robert Burns, edited 
by Robert Chambers, revised by William Wallace. 4 vols, (with 
full biography and essay on Character and Genius of Burns). For 
a review of this recent work and of the Centenary edition see an 
article in the Scottish Review, April, 1897, by James Davidson, 
entitled " New Light on Burns." 



CARLYLE. 



Helpful short accounts are John Nichol's Thomas Carlyle (English 
Men of Letters), Richard Garnett's Life of Thomas Carlyle (Great 
Writers), H. C. Macpherson's Thomas Carlyle (Famous Scots Series), 
and A. H. Guernsey's Thomas Carlyle (Appleton's Handy Volume 
Series). Those interested in the subject will enjoy Fliigel's little book 
on Thomas Carlyle 's Moral and Religions Development, translated from 
the German by J. G. Tyler. Mr. J. A. Froude has been considered 
Carlyle's biographer, but Professor Norton says : " To exhibit com- 
pletely the extent and quality of the divergence of Mr. Froude's narra- 
tive from the truth, the whole story would have to be rewritten." This 
work Mr. David Wilson is now doing. Meanwhile he has published 
his Mr. Fronde and Carlyle, for, he says, " there are delusions current 
which must be demolished before any truthful biographer can hope for 
a hearing." For Froude's Carlyle we shall soon be able to substitute 
Carlyle's Carlyle. 



Chronological List of Carlyle's Works 

Translations, and Life of Schiller 

French Revolution 

Sartor Resartus .... 

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays 

Chartism ..... 

Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History 



1824-1827 

1837 
1838 

1S39 
1840 
1 841 



84 REFERENCE BOOKS. 

Past and Present 1843 

Life and Letters of Oliver Cromwell ^45 

Latter-Day Pamphlets . . . . . . . . .1850 

Life of John Sterling 1851 

Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question .... 1853 

History of Friedrich II 1858-65 

Inaugural Address at Edinburgh 1866 

Shooting Niagara : and after ? 1867 

Mr. Carlyle on the War 187 1 

The Early Kings of Norway : also an Essay on the Portraits of 

John Knox 1875 

Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle, ed. by Froude . . . 188 1 

Reminiscences of my Irish Journey in 1849 1882 

Last Words of Thomas Carlyle. On Trades Unions, etc. . . 1882 

Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson 1883 

Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle ....... 1886 

Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle .... 1887 

Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle, ed. by C. E. Norton . . 1887 

Letters of Thomas Carlyle 1889 

History of Literature 1892 

Last Words of Thomas Carlyle. Wotton Reinfred : Excursion 

to Paris : Letters 1892 



OCT 14 1899 



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